Larnaca under Shadow _For a shaded urban terrace

The project is about the new building of the municipal market of Larnaca, to be placed at the site of the old, now demolished, market, at the heart of the city,

In our proposal we introduced the idea of the ‘shaded urban terrace’. We acknowledge that the creation of shaded spaces has become an important urban condition in Larnaca, both due to the harsh sunlight during a large part of the year, and the need for outdoors life of the residents. There are at least three different conditions of shaded spaces that we found in the city: the spots of shadow created by the umbrellas along the sea-side promenade, the temporary shaded areas on platforms and recreational spaces and the semi-open shaded spaces in the interior of blocks and workshops. These different versions of shaded city space that manage to enhance public life in many different ways have become the motivation for our proposal.

In our proposal we introduce the shadowed terrace of the city into the new Markets’ building by covering it up with a canopy. This canopy becomes the agent that multiplies the existing shaded city space from the ground of the marketplace up to the highest level of the parking space. At the same time a new cityscape is formed by the creation of an uninterrupted ground level. With these two design tools, the canopy and the ground, the commercial surface of the city is enforced and becomes uniform while the market is placed at its center, a nodal point in the entire commercial centre of Larnaca. 

Competition entry by

AA & U (Socrates Stratis, Riccardo Urbano)

And DraftWorks (Christos Papastergiou,

Christiana Ioannou, Christiana Karagiorgi)

City spaces - Interpreting the Event

The value of the contemporary city lies upon its ability to broaden experience either by hiding or revealing its qualities in space and time. Thus an evaluation, analysis and new interpretation are attempted through an experimental approach.

To attempt a definition of empty spaces, possible design practices are proposed without "occupying" existing settlements. The architecture proposals being light opaque layers of new space structures, suggest a new experience of the same – in a space of existing notion – now enriched through architecture design. therefore, one can participate in - rather than merely observe the city, thus experiencing an interactive reality.

Design on existing concrete structure 2002

Selected program: Theater

The choosing of the program evokes a specific spatial experience. Interaction of movement and function was the basic condition. Events insight the structural vacuous space, the exposed movement trough the suspended functional chambers, allow the possibility of witnessing the everyday events.   

Light industrial materials of metal and wood form folding surfaces which are suspended from existing concrete beams and pillars.

Basic design lines shape the main functional spaces of the theater, the amphitheater and the cloak room so that these spaces can be recognized within the whole structure. These lines seam to float between the concrete structures as light and non permanent spatial forms, as folded surfaces that wrap spaces. The distinction of the new structure is obvious through exterior and interior perspective views.

The Banks of the river Ilissos - Athens

 

 Urban Design Project

The decayed bank of the river Ilissos, could be considered as a sleeping giant as it hides a huge possibility of dynamic in the Athenian landscape. The power of evoking memory and its actual form as an empty – vacant space, make it a fragmentary end point for one’s  historical consciousness. Since it is situated between two different municipalities, actually as the end barrier of both, and having been blocked from the sea, it is found in a problematic relation to the urban space, man and the environment.

The streamline of contemporary Ilissos, could become a very strong axis of events, combining differences together, enhancing communication of inhabitants, rehabilitating memory of the past and fortifying the urban qualities of the future.

The design administers two basic ideas.

The adoption of local event for the neighborhood thus forming centre points for communal use and reestablishment of relations to nature thus enforcement of memory retreat of the past.

Ilissos can become an urban experience of intense changes, interesting image perspectives and event divergences.

A pattern of relating paths is planned, related to existing pedestrian precincts and empty spaces whereas communal uses are proposed. This pattern is either visible or notional interrupted or reappearing in space.

The design aims to reinforce the stream line of the old river giving it a dynamic of possibilities of uses and intense actions.

Three themed areas are designated as main points of design intervention whereas continuity in between them is realized in several ways.

The notion of nature is provided through an antithesis. The stream remains empty to a certain point of subversion where water appears dramatically. This intense antithesis as realized in space is purposed to evoke notions of rethinking different times in the rivers history – present and past. Across the stream whereas water is absent, river channels purpose to remind its existence.

These channels become the fragmental pieces of the river’s past –in a way of distortion - the water stream decays and breaks into pieces as entering the urban density, suggesting a resistance to the “solid” non natural environment of the city.  

The idea of interpenetration of different elements in space, produces transformations of great intense thus evoking notions of versatile realities. Through antithesis one can experience the stream line as an adventure of consciousness in the city’s present and past time.    

 

Pafos Town Hall

A Public space such as the town hall is the community’s representation. Pafos is a small town with a great past and up growing future. Its inhabitants need to concise of its historic value and through this memory restore the notion of its present dynamics and possibilities.

The building is the negative of an ark. Its insight is formed of solid structures wrapped up from a semi penetrated screen. The lobby is the crucial space of facing the past. Above it is suspended a symbolic memory space – the town’s library – sealed in a see through cube. The internal solid forms are obvious from the external thus making evident an inner and consistent depth of matter. This idea rather refers to the aesthetic notion of space as an analogue of remembering. Chambers of memory are difficult to reach, though an involuntary memory, that of the easy view penetration through a screen, can find fragments of past in the present.