In 2021, we were selected by the Cyprus Architects Association and Ministry of Culture, to curate and design the National Pavilion for Cyprus, at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Taking the pavilion’s original domestic typology as a point of departure, the exhibition scales up one of the most archetypical structures and social objects, the table, into a quasi-monumental form, establishing a space for gathering, encrusted with narratives of craft, collectivity, community and play.
The project responded to Hashim Sarkis’ curatorial question “How Will We Live Together?”, and in a time of international protocols of enforced distancing, imagines and explores spatial experiences that occur when inhabiting distances becomes a paradigm for new ways of being, living and working together.
The notion of Anachoresis, as explicated by Roland Barthes in “How to live together”, denotes an abrupt departure into spaces of atypical and idiorrhythmic manifestations of cohabitation. In the Cyprus Pavilion, Anachoresis has been introduced as an act which takes place on the convergence of urban-public and domestic-private spaces, where the distances between the two are blurred and inhabited.
Conceived as a schema and ideogram, the table is sequenced in three stages: piling: support structures (z), levelling: tabletops (xy) and activating: the objects and processes that inhabit the surface (xyz).
The unifying gesture of the tabletop is fragmented into a network of consecutive planes. The tabletops create multiple horizon lines at various heights, and form the backdrop for multiple speculative scenarios. The fragments inscribe protocols of distancing by demarcating the surface with circular forms of proxemic theory, quoting the proto-settlements of Khirokitia – tracing a geometric language for collective living.
A series of vertical elements form the support system for the tabletop’s surface. These nodes express the structural logic, distance and base rhythm of the plan as score. They introduce the raw materialities and topographies of Cyprus, spanning from coast, to plain, to mountain. They reference natural pigments, soils and textures from terrains of the island, which we build from and upon.
The tabletop is fragmented and re-assembled into a mosaic of ‘islands’, which allow for cultural, social and formal multiplicities. The surface of the table acts as a bridge connecting one place to another – an archipelago of micrographies in which objects and narratives of collectivity and exchange are embedded. These create a cartography of places and characters, operating between local and global, scales and rhythms.
Embedded into the surface are a series of objects subdivided into three categories:
infrastructure – necessary for the practical operation of the table’s architecture.
play – allowing for interaction and chance.
craft –referencing collectivity through knowledge exchange and working together to produce new cooperative methods and socially sustainable economies of making.
The table constructs an open-source framework, with multiple departure points into new rhythms of sociality. The table’s moving parts suggest a negotiation between cohabiting subjects, forming different proxemic patterns.
One is invited along a paced walk through spaces for pause and activation – implementing new protocols for distancing whilst balancing our need for being together. The act of walking is used as a mechanism to establish the relationship of architecture and visitor as one of conversation, non-static and in- flux.
Gathered on the circular table are proposals by architects and interdisciplinary groups from Cyprus and abroad, inviting reflections on the physical and social aspects of architectural practice. Through the perspectives of urban and domestic landscapes, queerness, play, architectural tradition, and technology, a micrography of fantasised communities is proposed.
Objects of communal functions are tagged in a system of cartography which considers architecture as an archive (trápeza) of things. Analogies arise between elements of chance and precision; DIY-ness and planning; inside and outside.
Type: Room
Location: Venice, Italy
Size: 84m2
For:La Biennale di Venezia , Cyprus ministry of culture
Status: Completed
Featured in: La biennale, New Generations, ArchDaily, E-flux, Cyprus Mail, Phileleftheros, Vuoto
Curators: ERa Savvides and Nasios Varnavas (Urban Radicals), Marina Christodoulidou, Evagoras Vanezis
Exhibitors: Urban Radicals
Soundscape: Yiannis Christofides
Dance-as-design: Georgia Tegou, Michalis Theophanous
Contributors: Serhan Ahmet-Tekbas, Thanasis Ikonomou, Mariza Daouti, Eftychios Savvidis, Eleni Diana Elia, Kleanthis Rousos, Charis Nika, Sebastian Koukkides, Eleonora Antoniadou, Nayia Savva, Christophoros Kyriakides, Orestis Kyriakides, Dakis Panayiotou, Theodoulos Polyviou, Veronika Antoniou, Teresa Tourvas, Natalie Savva, Mark Rist, Rania Francis, Gergana Popova, Regner Ramos, Kleanthis Kyriakou, Brian Torres, Emilio Koutsoftides, Gabor Stark
With thanks to: Design and Making, Clayworks, Oban CNC, Antaios Earth Blocks, Vassos Demetriou Ceramics, Tradition now, Cyprus Handicraft Service, Cyens, Studio Lin (Graphic Design), Archive Books, Grafiche Veneziane
Photography: Ugo Carmeni