The campus of the University of Cyprus has emerged from the fragmentation of the land into separate plots, which receive separate building-programs. The proposal attempts to reverse, even if individually, the logic of the separation of buildings-plots. A public movement is introduced through the new Medicine building, running from north to south. In this way, the main pedestrian street Belvedere of the University acquires a vertical urban modulization, extending the public space within the building in a controlled and organized condition, with visual escapes towards the open horizon. A fundamental design gesture is the placement of two longitudinal prisms at the base, and on them, the placement of transverse prisms, at a distance from each other, to restore a porous, airy and sunny typology, in the “grid” pattern. In contrast to modern buildings that reproduce the closed structure, here the open, linear building structure is proposed. The proposal introduces an open building structure in analogy with the Renaissance type of the Loggia. The loggia is a covered urban, public, space at critical traffic nodes of the urban fabric. The medical school, expressing the pivotal relationship of science that serves with society, reproduces in the present proposal the urban type of the building-loggia.
Collaborators: Nikos Platsas, Katerina Kritou, Vasia Lyri, Efthymia Dimitrakopoulou, Lydia Antoniou, Sofia Tektonidou