The
architect who designed the peace building and reconciliation centre on
the site of the former Maze Prison has said he is convinced the scheme
will go ahead.
In August, First Minister Peter Robinson sent a letter to his party members announcing that he was halting the project.
He said there needed to be a broad consensus on how it would
operate and what it would contain - and that is currently absent, in his
view. But the New York-based architect Daniel Libeskind believes Mr Robinson's intervention is simply part of the process.
Mr Libeskind masterminded the Ground Zero project in New York and the Jewish Holocaust Museum in Berlin.
"I've seen that pause button in every project," he said.
"I think that every building (I've worked on) had a similar
process; initial impetus then: 'How do we get consensus? How do we bring
people together?'
"But in every one of those instances the building was able to
forge a path towards the future. So I think it will happen. I think
that people will understand that it's not a shrine to terrorism. I have
full confidence that it will happen."
The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson suggested many people in
Northern Ireland felt the site was not the proper place for a peace
centre because of its association with the past and because of its
retained buildings.
"I think that if those buildings had been removed from the
site, and we were looking at a green field I think people could have
lived with that but not with the retained buildings on the site, and I
think that in essence has been the problem here," he said.
I travelled to Studio Daniel Libeskind in downtown Manhattan
to speak to the architect about his hopes as part of my forthcoming
Radio Ulster documentary, Building on the Past.
The renowned architect Daniel Libeskind pictured during a visit to the Maze site last year
The centre is part of a £300m site redevelopment, but the DUP had been criticised for supporting it.
In his letter of last month, Mr Robinson ruled out any public
use of the retained buildings - the one existing H-Block, where
paramilitaries were held - and the hospital where Bobby Sands and other
republican hunger strikers died.
He also said the prospects for building any peace centre at
the site near Lisburn must be linked to building a wider consensus, and
cannot just be about securing support from within the DUP and Sinn Féin.
The Maze/Long Kesh Development Corporation has promised 5,000
permanent jobs on the site and the peace centre was seen as the key to
unlocking the full jobs and economic potential of the wider 347-acre
site near Lisburn.
Over the years, the scheme to redevelop the former prison site has been controversial.
The Maze housed paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles
from 1971 to 2000. Ten republican prisoners died on hunger strike there.
But Daniel Libeskind told me that those who believed the site would glorify terrorists had got it wrong.
'It's a complete falsehood. I was born in Poland, my parents
were Holocaust survivors. I was born in a Communist country and dreaded
going to school there," he said.
"How can I, who embrace democracy and open society, be
involved in something as evil as celebrating terrorism? Who in their
right mind would do that? I would never be involved in this project if I
did not consider it something important - to bring people to Belfast to
that site."
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