Re-establishing a community’s identity from a state of flux and change
The circumstances of the Iraqi Kurdish Diaspora in London have changed dramatically following the death of Saddam Hussein in 2006 and the establishment of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. For the diaspora, this made the possibility of realising their dream of returning to a homeland a reality, but equally it removed their identity as a diaspora.
This thesis explores how the state of confusion of belonging and returning affects the cultural context in the host land of the displaced group. The physical environment in the host land, which is less connected to crisis in the homeland, reacts differently (or maybe not at all) to the sudden change of identity and the state of disorientation of the people. The site for this investigation is a cultural institution and community organisation which was supported by the host country (UK) in the 1980s for the Iraqi Kurdish community but now struggles to function as an effective source of support for the community. The Kurdish Cultural Centre London (KCC), based in the London Borough of Lambeth, accommodates the oldest Kurdish organisation in London. The KCC building is in the same physical condition as it was before 2003 (the capture of Saddam Hussein) and is decorated with diaspora memorabilia still representing the ‘homelessness’ of the nation, while the Kurdish Diaspora is in their biggest crisis of identity to date, even though the homeland has been ‘re-found’. The building has failed to deal with this crisis.
As a result of the above, the design project uses the position of an existing closed archive and library of Kurdish literature, located in the heart of the building, as a creative and symbolic trigger. In a bid to make this ‘core’ more accessible, a more flexible construction replaces the current housing of the archive. The structure embodies the nature of incompleteness and flux in an attempt to reveal the on-going narrative of the diaspora in dialogue with the building’s fabric and spatial organisation. This relationship between core and surrounding structure is conceived as analogous with that of a common imagined identity and the reality of identity as continual flux and flow.
