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Architects: Christian Kerez
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Maxime Delvaux
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Lead Architect: Christian Kerez
Text description provided by the architects. The four car parks in the Old City Center of Muharraq are part of the Pearl Path Project by the Ministry of Culture of Bahrain. This project combines the renovation of traditional residences and contemporary projects like the Pavilion for the World Expo by Anne Holtrop, a visitor center by Valerio Olgiati and a series of urban squares by OFFICE. The car parks cover and multiply the large open voids in the dense medieval urban structure of Muharraq. They create first and foremost a space for the public that could also be used for prayer, events or markets. Many people will visit the buildings not just to park their cars, but also to experience the ever-changing spaces walking through these structures. The parking facilities in Bahrain's old city center of Muharraq consist of four buildings with a total surface of 45'000 m2. They follow the same principles of design in four different ways on four different plots. The slabs of these buildings bend and slope, merging into each other so that they also serve as ramps connecting one level to another. The slabs create a distinctive spatial experience when moving up or down the car park through their geometrical transformation from concave to convex, high and low, into spaces expanding to the interior or to the outside of the building. The movement of the cars creates a continuously changing space throughout the entire building.
Plot D - This is the smallest of the four car parks but since it is also the most exposed, it has the most distinctive sculptural, vertical expression. In addition, as the most challenging to organize, this small plot was used as a role model for the other car parks to be designed later on. The exposed load bearing structure of the car parks consists only of slabs and columns. The stiffening to withstand horizontal loads like winds or earthquakes is achieved through the connection of one slab to another. The composite columns measure between 25 and 30 centimeters. The span of approximately 10 meters produced very high punching forces in the slabs. Bent metal steel plates at the bottom and top of each prefabricated column connect the heavy large slabs with the vertical structural elements. The stairs and elevator shafts are totally exposed, the latter covered with a transparent foil of PVC. The stairs work like springs between the slabs. Due to differences in building height between 220 and 480 cm, the location of the landing changes from one level to the next. The circular stairs had to be very lightweight to avoid uneven loads within the loadbearing structure.
No slab is identical, creating an endless diversity of spaces. The formwork is based on conventional industrial products such as scaffolding towers. Very little of the sculptural formwork is customized. The constantly changing surfaces made it necessary to draw 75'000 sections on the scale 1:20, which was done by scripting. These sections were later printed 1:1 to cut the last element of the formwork on site. The large workforce usually required on construction sites in the Middle East was also necessary here in addition to the contemporary possibilities of computing to create this endlessly varied geometry. The project was possible only by bringing both together.
