This Project originates in a 1973 Winning Competition Entry for a Cluster of Government Offices, which was a collaboration between ‘Sir Basil Spence, Bonnington & Collins’ and our Practice. The Project is located at the performative epicentre of Nicosia’s Central Business District (CBD), around the historic structure of ‘Archigrammatia’. As is the case with very ambitious public projects at difficult times, a series of parameters have initially delayed the project’s materialisation, which in turn was heavily revised and reduced – both in size and ambition – by the time its implementation was decided.
Once this moment arrived, the Project was ‘toned down’ to the Ministry of Finance in conjunction to a number of Supportive Functions and Auxiliary Services. Having said that, the Project is still of considerable institutional importance and physical extent, able to substantially inflect its urban area. Indeed, its immediate area constitutes a key node along Nicosia’s Civic and Cultural Armature, linking the Presidential Palace to the Courts of Law, via the Houses of Parliament.
Architecturally the project’s spatial articulation was developed with emphasis on its intricate functional accommodation, and their interrelated technical parameters. This yielded a strong planimetric organisation with monumental massing as was deemed appropriate for a principal governmental institution. Due to the gradual shifts in the local climatological conditions and the extensive need for a space of repose, the initial courtyard was subsequently transformed into a three-storey atrium that allows a certain informality to flourish amidst an otherwise civic and formal landscape.