REDEVELOPMENT OF ATHLETIC PARK - (ATHLETIC PARK AT THE GCO STADIUM)

Margarita Danou, Margarita Danou Architects

The project of the New Athletic Park of GCO, set at a historical site of a neglected stadium along the coastal edge of Limassol, aims to re-qualify the site as an important link between the residential area and the coastal public space, allowing an articulated transition between urban landscape, the park and the sea. This transition blurs the boundaries between natural and artificial environments and offers a new vision of artificial landscape and the city.

The objective of the project is twofold: to identify the formal features and functional destination of the site as a park, used everyday for its athletic facilities; and – by highlighting the relationship with the surrounding area - to define the project area as a fragment of a more extensive urban renewal program, where the site has its special role during a special annual event/celebration. This second objective engages the park to a series of other public spaces in the city as it can become a vessel for an event during festivals, exhibitions, fairs, religious and civil ceremonies.

The park consists of a series of overlapping fields and lines (raised pedestrian bridge, wooden platforms, football grounds, playgrounds, jogging tracks, basketball courts) knit together to form a tissue that joints a succession of distinct territories. It generates a continuity of movement and perception. The fields are patterns of movement engendered by cars, cyclists, athletes, skaters and pedestrians. Each has an itinerary as well as a static fixture. This sense of three dimensional vectors is enhanced by the treatment of space. The play of space continues in the illuminated strips on the ground, in the fittings and in the shaping of the natural plantation. A raised concrete promenade loosely follows the edge of the site from south to north, widening and narrowing to create a series of specific places along the way.

Client: CYPRUS SPORTS ORGANIZATION

Categories: Sports and Recreational Activities

Location: LIMASSOL, Cyprus

ADC: implemented/built after an ADC, open ADC 2006