In one of their latest museum projects, a team of Greek architects won the commission in an international competition in 2013 to design the new Underwater Antiquities Museum in Piraeus, Greece.
The design competition also includes a park to surround the museum. The aim is for museum and park to “strengthen and complement” each other, creating a new cultural destination.
Once completed the museum will provide a permanent exhibition space for antiquities recovered from shipwrecks such as statuary, weapons, jewelry and amphorae among others.
“The planned Underwater Antiquities Museum will for the first time provide the opportunity to present to the Greek public remains of ancient and historic ships and boats recovered from the sea floor under the best possible conservation conditions,” said the organizers.
The ships or partial ships preserved in the museum will include Mentor, a 19th century vessel sunk near the island of Kythera while transporting a cargo of Classical Greek marble sculptures removed of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin and a 13th century byzantine vessel sunk at the port of Rhodes.
The visitor to the museum will be presented with a number of realistic audiovisual, interactive, and other simulated experiences. These include a dive into a shipwreck and sailing through a powerful storm. The museum will also include a training tank for scuba diving and training courses.
Through its exhibitions, collections and varied program, the museum will offer a stimulating and memorable learning experience.
Short description of the proposal:
The restructuring of the coastal zone of the Port of Piraeus restores the broken relationship between the city and the sea. It takes recreational and cultural uses of various qualities and references, reflecting in the spirit of its planning, the hovering position of the Haetionian coast between land and water, urban and marine landscape, local and supralocal character.
The new Museum of Marine Antiquities redefines and amplifies the self-marking of the historic building of Silo as an established landmark of supralocal character. The stern introvert machine-building of the past, claims its contact with the open space, revealing hidden sides to the city and “emptying” freely its interior towards the sea. The content of the building takes the shape of an organic form which flows outwards, as a reminder of a ship’s hull or a sea monster. The plasticity and the modern character of this metal form dialectically contrast with the Cartesian sternness of the monolithic block of concrete of the existing building.
Source: iefimerida.gr [June 05, 2015]