Principal Architects: Maria Sfyraki, Apostolis Kassios
Project team: Architect: Marianna Karaliolou
Students of Architecture
: Georgios Gerakianakis,
Eleanna Zarafoniti, Lousi Gezekelian
Structural Design: Design and Application Engineers S.A.,
Markos G. Salteris – Civil Engineer
Building Technology: Jepa – John Emmanuel
Papagrigorakis & Associates
Landscaping Consultant: Outside Landscape Architecture –
Eva Papdimitriou, Elina Katsika
Museologist: Amalia Tsitouri, Thaleia Spyridaki
NEW CYPRUS MUSEUM
NEW CYPRUS MUSEUM
” The Construct Body and the Performing Landscape”
International Architectural Competition for the New Cyprus Museum, Nicosia 2016-2017
“I will sing of stately Aphrodite, gold-crowned and beautiful, whose dominion is the walled cities of all sea-set Cyprus. There the moist breath of the western wind wafted her over the waves of the loud-moaning sea in soft foam”, Homer
STRATEGY AS WHISPER
The proposed project entitled “The Construct Body and The Performing Landscape” is perceived as a “lived moment”. The project aims to highlight as an urban value, that the social innovation of a city-centred museum building is about its role as a social art and as a means of making society and everyday life visible, thus breathing through the wave of citizen’s memories that flows in.
The story of “The Construct Body and the Performing Landscape” project begins from the topography of the “Rock of Aphrodite”; a sea stack in Pafos. The landscape’s ingredients are the soil, the sun, the wind, and an imposing rock accompanied by several smaller emerged from the Mediterranean Sea. The Museum project responds to the dynamic of the Mediterranean (- Performing Landscape), giving birth to a -Construct Body of a lived stone-scape of an imposing rock and smaller ones, like a Mother (Museum) and its infants (Library, Conference Hall, Department of Antiquities). The proposed project also activates the dynamic of its surrounding urban fabrics as visualities of memory capable of sculpturing the “site” as a shared space of “Rocks”, “Sea” and “Natural Land”.
“ROCKS”. THE CONSTRUCT BODY
The projects building material, that of the traditional soft stone of Cyprus, is strategically selected, having the ability of engraving the main elements of the projects forms, giving a natural temple-like essence. Three main “Rocks” are scattered into the plot: The Museum, the Library and the Conference Hall with the Department of Antiquities. The Rock of the Museum (Mother) incorporates the hieroglyphics of the Mediterranean Culture, The Luminous Main Entrance, an area that functions as an outdoor covered walkway-arcade, The large scale central Internal Atrium in direct dialogue with a dramatic skylight hanging above it, acting as the focal directional point of the museological path welcoming the visitors, hosting a vast forest of Olive Trees, The internal, yet outdoor, Mediterranean garden, situated adjacent to the educational space, The Botanic Park on the roof top of the Museum acting as the final scenery of the internal Museological path, but also as another Open Museum, a Belvedere to the city’s views and an elevated landscape that brings to life the culture of flora, herbs and specific trees all of which are connected with the myth of Aphrodite.
The Rock of the Museum is surrounded by its infants, scattered into the Landscape: the Museum Administration, the Conference Hall and Department of Antiquities and the Library.
The “SEA”. THE PERFORMING LANDSCAPE
The Sustainable Landscaping is organized through four main sectors: The Park – The Ponds – the strategically Concentrated Planting Areas and the elevated Botanic Park. The Landscape design of 8.000 square meters hosting Olive groves, Aromatic Plants and fruit trees in combination with the 3 features of planted streaming water ponds, is inspired by the environmental characteristics of the Cypriot land, thus regenerating native vegetation and creating sustainable, micro-ecosystems that will foster the local habitat, offering an enlightening new destination.
The proposed project “The Construct Body and the Performing Landscape” aims to form a Museum as a Social Memory Landscape, based on the everlasting power of the Mediterranean Soil to be a “thousand things together”.
IT’S ALL IN THE HANDS.
Architectural sketches are not about looking pretty. They are all about communicating ideas. They are all about the “gathering” of a team.
