The competition sets out the construction of a museum for focusing the attention on the Argo ship, a figure of the greek mithology. According to the mithology, the boat was shiped by Jason and the agronauts from Iolcos to the Black Sea to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
The greek architects team, Tense Architecture Network (TAN) has been awarded with the Second Prize for its proposal, in which the ship is treated as the attention focus. The composition of the museum born from the study of the ship's shape, the following interpretation and its development as an architectural element.
From outside of it, the museum allows pedestrians to glimpse the mithical ship, through semi-transparent metal curtin, as well as reflected on the water below it. With this decision the architects attempt to give an idea about the ship as something 'free, precious and unique'.
Description of the project by Tense Architecture Network (TAN)
The mythical Argo in a Museum: a defined space, simple but concise, distinct but symbolic, intelligible but mystagogical, where the mythical ship constitutes the center of attention, the main exhibit, the point of reference. The proposal is born by considering Argo the composition’s starting point –via three moves: The ship is embraced by its proper shape, this primary shape gets ruptured, the hull tears it in two, the two parts slide, Argo tra-verses the Museum. At the same time it lies within it. The Museum is born by and gets traversed by the ship, the two bisected parts now lie immobile, above the water, as Clenching Rocks. The diagonal composition of two curved parts that are torn apart but are also kept together by the main exhibit, is a double gesture: its meaning derives firstly by the natural relation to the ship itself and secondly through the correlation to the surrounding space: the sharp edge of the museum approaches the Park and comes up dynamically to the avenue, ascribing a landmark character to the building. From a distance, one may perceive the mythical ship either peeking out of a semi-transparent metal curtain or coming out fully unveiled, mirrored on the reflecting water, free, precious, unique.
Text.- Tense Architecture Network (TAN).
CREDITS.-
Project Team.- Tilemachos Andrianopoulos, Thanos Bampanelos, Kostas Mavros, George Kostoglou and Antigoni Tsivanidou.
Collaborators.- Athanassios Kontizas (Structural Design), Spiros Arvanitis (Engineering).
