Minimum Domus | Lemba, Cyprus | 2016

Architects: Petrās Architecture
Client: Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture
General Contractor: Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture
Photographers: Petrās Architecture

Minimum Domus European Competition for the creation of the Cultural Village of Lemba – Cyprus | 3rd Prize. 

The new building forms as a structural composition of a minimum domus relevant to the existing lab of the famous painter Stass Paraskos and the ancient structures of the adjacent archaeological site of Lemba.

The building integrates to the context and converse with the organic structure of the art wall, an artistic composition generated from piecemeal interventions by the author and his students.

Minimum Domus is a clay box of 6,0m size, multiplied and rotated along the site surface, affected by the parameters of the existing structures, the new space uses, the site boundary, the sun solstice and the proposed public flows.

Minimum Domus generates two clusters: The southern includes the artist and student housing of the complex while the northern includes the new Art College, and the Artist Labs.

The composition in the southern plot develops as a continuation of existing art laboratories of Stass Paraskos and provides a uniform surface of public flows for visitors between buildings, vegetation and plateaus, reproducing the structure of a small cultural 'village.'

Specific boxes differentiate from the rest and act as intermediate spaces between public and private areas.

Their glazing panels allow views to the interior from the side pedestrian road and under appropriate climate circumstances the class can expand to the public space.

The box overlapping transforms the interior spatial boundary into a complex geometry where unified spaces and private corners of work can simultaneously exist.