Array

Array

Florina School of Fine Arts
Title

Z Hotel

Location

Florina, Greece

Type

Architectural Design

Date

2019

Status

Competition

Project Description:

The architectural proposal reimagines the organizational principals of a School of Fine Arts in a way that challenges their traditional structure and expands the public areas in the building. This expansion enables alternative ways of occupation, encourages interaction between users and leads to the reassessment of how a School of Fine Arts should function not only in terms of its students and members of staff but also in terms of the city and its residents.The main architectural concept is based on a network of external covered spaces – ‘Art Courtyards’ – that runs through the building, starting at the ground floor entrance and leading up to the rooftop. These courtyards depending on their location, size and typology create spaces of different qualities that function either individually as extensions to the workshops or combined as an external exhibition space with public access. The exhibition space can be used by the students for presentations, events etc.as well as to display the work of guest artists attracting more external visitors to the school. The external visitors by navigating through the Courtyards network they can explore the workshop spaces and subsequently experience the creative process and gain a better understanding of it.In other words the Art Courtyards are creative hubs that function as catalysts that enable dialog and interaction between students and citizens in order to transform the creative initiatives into plausible actions, promote the history and identity of the school and showcase it’s new image. The  concept of the Art Courtyards has reference  to the traditional typology of  ‘hayati’ (loggias)  – an external covered space frequently found in the traditional architecture of Florina and wider Balkan area. The word ‘hayati’ has its origins in the turkish word ‘hayat’ that means life and subsequently ‘hayati’ in the traditional architecture was the space that most activities of the house took place. As an analogy to this concept the ‘Art Courtyards’ are meant to be the center of the School life functioning as magnets for people, ideas and cultural events  but also as a reference point for the citizens of Florina facilitating communication, dialog and collective actions and promoting the School identity. Parallel to this, the Courtyard network and the spiraling path that connects them run through the building and erode its orthogonal mass affecting its form. This ‘erosion’ results to a sequence of open and closed spaces which combined with the inclined surfaces of the auditoria and stairs and the faceted roof creates a sculptural form that makes reference to the programmatic use of the building as a School of Fine Arts and becomes a landmark for the city of Florina.