Team: Irgen Salianji, Marina
Kounavi, Karolina Szóstkiewicz, Roxana Aron, Eugenio Cardoso
Location: Nicosia, Cyprus
Total
Area: 16.000
m2
Client: Department of Public Works of
the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works
Status: Competition Project
Cityscape
The site’s
location adjacent to Nicosia’s most important cultural buildings and in between
the old city’s Venetian walls and the Pedieos river create a dynamic context
for the design decisions taken in the design of Cyprus Muse¬um. The potentials
and the shape of the site, alongside its location, inspire a building typology that
is free-standing and accessible all around - a pavilion in the park. The direct
connection with the existing Cyprus Museum and the continuity to the municipal
park on the North are the key elements for the urban alignment of the proposal.
The building is positioning in the heart of the site as a central polarity that
is surrounded by generous public and green spaces, as well as a series of open
spaces for var¬ious cultural activities all around it. The volume is rotated in
such a way that it can have clear alignments and re¬late to the house of the
Representatives and the existing Cyprus Museum. As a result the building is
standing be¬tween the urban and the natural realm, aiming to become an
incubator of activities.
Statement
Statistic
surveys indicate that the majority of visitors in museums are mainly tourists
and not people from the local community. This fact raises questions on the
different facilities that the museums have to have in order to broaden the spectrum of
visitors and being active cultural nodes of a city.
Cyprus is one of
the oldest civilizations in the Aegean Sea that is dating back from 3900-2500
BC. Its collection is enormous and will attract people from all around the
world. The New Cyprus Museum is aiming to be a meeting point for tourists,
academics, students and archeologists in the Mediterranean Sea. The building
has to meet the criteria of a contemporary archeological museum and its deign
to be innovative in terms of new technologies, research of new curatorial
approaches and facilities that could offer.
The museum acts as cultural hub that
attracts people to meet, interact and socialize. On a second level, the museum
functions as a tourist meeting point, where visitors meet and enjoy a relaxing
time, checking out the really big permanent exhibition but also, temporary
exhibits, drinking coffee and getting informed for the city’s attractions and
happenings.
Concept
The ground based
volume is shifted towards the Venetian Walls and the existent museum connecting
them with Pedieos river and the extension of the municipal garden. The position
of it is creating an urban passage that is the main entrance of the new Cyprus
Museum. Subtracting the volume of the urban passage, we are creating a void
that is a placeholder for all the interactive and public program of the
building. In the same time the void separates the building into two different
podiums that they serve separately public and restricted access functions. The
exhibition is on the end of these two podiums working as a connector.
Organization
The museum is
designed as an open programmatic condenser featuring a large urban room in the
heart of it, a generous space of gathering for the visitors and a challenging
ground for curators to exhibit archeology in an open and non linear format that
has been previously unforeseen. The void is connecting the city with the
permanent exhibition space on the top floor through a series of large and
monumental stairs, ramps and stepped interior landscapes on which visitors can
also seat, use and celebrate. As the implementation of the building program
includes two different phases of construction, we proposed the creation of
three different buildings of different scales and architectural language: the
box-shaped large museum building, the cross-shaped building that will house the
department of antiquities and the library building, to be housed inside the
renovated and extended existing building.
The lower part
of the building is divided into two different podiums with independent access,
program and circulation. The Southern podium is housing the visitor’s amenities
and services on the ground floor, the laboratories on the three levels above
and the administration on the fifth floor. It is also connected with the
storerooms that are located in the basement of the building through a large
circulation core and freight elevator. This podium is steep and creates different
platforms on which the employees could hang out while being at work. In the
same time, the visitors are able to see the process that is going on at the
laboratories without having access to it. The Northern podium serves the
educational part of the program and on its surface, a part of the temporary
exhibition of the museum is located. A stepped continuous surface and a ramp
are creating both accessibility and dynamic exhibition spaces, proposing a
different- more challenging curatorial structure. Such spatial arrangements
motivate the visitor to meander around the exhibits and, on key moments, to
observe a continuous landscape of exhibits.
Exhibition
The lower part of the building is divided into two
different podiums with independent access, program and circulation. On the
northern podium, the temporary exhibition is located on a stepped continuous
surface and a ramp that are creating both accessibility and dynamic exhibition
spaces, proposing a different- more challenging curatorial structure. Such
spatial arrangements motivate the visitor to meander around the exhibits and,
on key moments, to observe a landscape of exhibits, as for example and array of
sculptures. The proposal refers to the qualities of the cabinet of the
curiosities (Kunstkammer) and the museum of Soane. In the same time, this
surface is leading the visitor to the upper two floors of the permanent
exhibition.
The permanent
exhibition is located on the top floor and is a well defined rectangular and
flexible space with indirect controlled lighting from the roof. The floor-plan
allows for multiple exhibition layouts and performs as a generic background for
the archaeological exhibits to stand out. The design is based on a series of
pivoting walls that are mounted on the columns, providing the curators with the
possibility to easily change the space according to the needs of the
exhibition.
you guys keep doing the same project over and over again on any occasion :) and pls stop deleting this comment :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments! Repetition sometimes leads to further improvement, however it is not necessarily our aim. We do not delete any comments! BR, IS
DeleteI love the architecture of the cypress museum. i just bucketlisted it for visiting.
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