Brief
The Gallipoli Peninsula is a World Heritage Site, a site of fundamental historic and strategic significance. It is a damaged and fragile ecosystem and is an intrinsic part of the nation-building heritage of three governments and peoples. How do we address the economic, ecological, military, religious, archaeological needs of Gallipoli and develop a sustainable environment and visitor destination?

Approach
Our multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural team carried out extensive desk and site research, meeting and brainstorming with distant and local stakeholders and a wide variety of experts. We developed a series of “archetypes” that best described the current Gallipoli community (which is dominated by visitors). From this we “saw” the Peninsula through the eyes both of the archetypes and of our key “character”, an Australian backpacking visitor, living out the diary entries of her grandfather who was killed as a young man on the Gallipoli battlefields. Her journey’s moving and iconic experiences touched on every aspect of life, memories and built intervention on the Peninsula and each encounter built up the picture in greater depth.

Outcome
Our team, which represented the UK, placed in the winning line-up for this well-funded international ideas competitions. All placed winners have had our ideas “blended” into one seamless whole over the ten-year project.

Feedback
The team was presented with our award by the President of Turkey at a widely publicised two-day event, attended by heritage, architectural and landscape stakeholders from around the world.

Building Strategies - I