The competition brief called for a new master plan for a 3000m2 plot in the center of Larnaca’s historical fabric. The new plan had to incorporate a new urban plaza featuring urban amenities, a new multistory car park facility and a municipal market building with assorted public event facilities. The proposal placed the open urban space in the east side of the plot, allowing the existing fabric to open up to it, and connected it to the adjacent access roads with routes of various scales, both pedestrian and vehicular. The two new structures, multistory car park and market building, define the southern and western sides of the plaza, while also offer programmatic and formal equipment to animate the plaza.
The 5 storey car park is equipped with a ‘programmatic unit’ on its façade, able to populate all 5 levels and roof with micro-programming, while also allowing the occasional full configuration of a (car parking) floor into an event space, all reflecting on the plaza. The 2 storey market building is set up to open up its organizational axis onto the square, allowing for the continuity of its space onto the outdoors.
The proposal built on the idea of a simple orthogonal box frame structure that would be both economical to erect and would allow for great configuration flexibilities. The internal spatial syntax presents flexibility -all levels can accept different arrangements, division layouts and uses – but without resorting to uniformity, instead developing conditions of ‘heterotopy’, where the formal articulation predisposes but does not fix specific programmatic provisions or uses.
Architects: Michael Cosmas Architecture
Project Architect: Michael Cosmas
Team : Antonis Antoniou, Theodora Papanastasiou
Structural Engineering: EPS/ Nikos Kalathas
Mechanical Engineering: E-mech
Electrical Engineering: Electroproject
Lighting: n/a
