The discussion around interculturalism at the mac, led by Phil Wood (Intercultural Cities : Planning for Diversity Advantage) took as its starting point the idea that in an intercultural society identities are fluid, boundaries between groups permeable, and categories like ‘ethnicity’ and ‘cultural heritage’ complex and not immutable.

An oft-cited limitation of multicultural models is that they imagine diverse ‘communities,’ each separate and homogenous, living separately but equally. There is little room for the kind of dialogue, exchange and mixture that makes intercultural models so exciting.

Interculturalism is key to the idea of the city as a creative enterprise in which diversity is seen as an advantage rather than something we have to deal with. In a creative, culturally literate city diversity is not an end but a starting point; it doesn’t only require a diverse population but necessitates dialogue between diverse people.
The development of the new mac started a conversation about what an intercultural space would look like.

Ideally it would be a place in which every complex and diverse individual could feel at home. A space as flexible and ever-changing as its users in which they can claim a sense of belonging and of ownership. The space has to essentially be defined by its users, built by them from the ground up.

Would it be a white space, a ‘blank canvas’ onto which the diverse identities of the users of that space can be inscribed?

Should the architect attempt to embed the memories and identities of these users into the very fabric of the place? And if so, how to go about it?

Mac used a fairly light touch in expressing some sense of the cultural diversity of Birmingham into the building. There are the commissions by artists Myfanwy Johns and Sara Taylor – based on the geometric shape of the hexagon (a nod to the mac’s Hexagon Theatre and traditional Islamic motifs) and created with a commitment to the local space in terms of content and process. But the generous amount of wall space and general sense of openness and mean the building is, as yet, undefined.

Dorothy Wilson, creative director and chief executive of mac confirmed this by stating that the design and development of the building came more from imagining possibilities than from a certain cultural agenda. A sense of place, time and memory will grow as people come together to use and produce things in it. There are high hopes for the mac to have a unique position in the cultural geography of Birmingham as a space for dialogue and exchange, a place, as Sampad chair Ranjit Sondhi put it, to have ‘dangerous conversations safely.’

• Karen's blog