This Project concerned an Invited Competition for the 1st Implementation Phase of Larnaca Marina, which incorporated 5 large buildings. For its part, the urban design of Larnaca Marina was itself part of an existing broader Master-Plan that also incorporated the adjacent Port. Our response to this brief was to appraise and restructure the entire urban strategy inherited at that point in time, in a way that it would enable Larnaca Marina to operate as the performative epicentre of the city of Larnaca – given that Athinon Avenue (Phinikoudes) and Larnaca’s historic core cannot really sustain this role.
While this requalification of the existing Master-Plan was intentionally restricted within the existing footprints of the Master-Plan’s components, its strategic reconfiguration was dramatic – as it was premised upon a series of strong and complimentary spatial moves. These include, but are not limited to: (1) the creation of three clearly-defined, thematically-oriented and complementary Urban Squares, (2) the deployment of Public Stoas along all Buildings’ waterfront side (thereby ensuring that there is ample covered space for general promenade and specific use along the entire park’s long edge), (3) the formation of a single, extensive and differentiated Urban Park equipped with three Pavilions with Activated Roofs, and (4) the introduction of a generous in size Water Feature that would enable its diverse presence in the park (along the lines of Bordeaux’s ‘Mirror of Water’).
Together these moves, in conjunction to the formal articulation of each of the 1st Phase Buildings enabled the fleshing out of specific architectural tactics for all involved buildings – thereby ensuring that unity in and definition of the Project was the accomplished via calculated diversity. This theme also informed the Project’s roofscape. While planning laws in general, but also in Cyprus in particular, tend to regulate building heights, there is rarely an opportunity – let alone an attempt – to regulate a cohesive yet differentiated roofline, which itself becomes the Project’s dominant icon.
