The AA Cyprus UN Buffer Zone is an annually recurring workshop aiming to map and respond to issues and problems arising from the establishment of the no man’s land zone in Cyprus during 1974. Our approach towards the future rehabilitation of the UN Buffer zone is based on an agenda of associative digital urban design.

Having been abandoned for 40 years now, the development of territories lying within the Buffer Zone has been brought to a practical standstill. Our aim is to re-instantiate this development, fast-forwarding into the near future and speculating on the sprawling tendencies or predicted demise of the Green Line’s urban or rural fabric. Computation and the creation of our own associative tools enables these architectural speculations to take place. In response to this design intent, during the AA Visiting School intensive tuition by experienced tutors in several software platforms takes place.

 The AA CY Visiting School returns this year, starting July 21st 2014, at Kato Pyrgos area, on the north-west coastline of Cyprus, researching and fabricating Floating Assembly Refugee Relief Components (FARRCo) for UN Personnel, to be deployed into the water. For more info http://cyprus.aaschool.ac.uk/2014-kato-pyrgos/


The site for the Cyprus Visiting School 2013 was the village of Athienou in the Larnaca District, located midway between the cities of Nicosia and Larnaca. Being one the four villages in Cyprus that lies within the UN Buffer Zone, namely at Sector Four, Athienou has a population of 5,000 people with the entirety of its residential area situated within the Green Line that swells up to a width of 7.4 kilometres to encompass the village.


With approximately 2,500 hectares of the north part of the area lying within Turkish occupied territories the residential part of Athienou, forms a nucleus of 1,700 hectares that is separated from the border with Northern Cyprus by a narrow corridor of open land. Aside from an area designated as industrial land annexed to the village at the southwest and another area for keeping livestock at the southeast, this residential nucleus is surrounded by open arable land where new building construction is not permitted. Landlocked by the restricting presence of the surrounding Green Line, as well as by governmental land policies that are designating specific land uses, the area is currently lacking any form of expansion strategies that would form blueprints for its future growth. Students were introduced to the various complex land conditions and ownership via a series of maps and by analyzing the Treaty of Establishment of the Republic of Cyprus and especially the chapters related with the British Bases. In response to all these conditions, the scope of the 2013 Cyprus Visiting School brief was to create proposals operating on two main levels.


The first was to create ‘intermediary’ designs that formed strategic interventions in the existing area, the role of which was to essentially prepare the ground for the forthcoming masterplan strategies. The aim therefore was to generate growth scenarios on a landlocked, boundary-controlled landscape that would respond to a future situation where the removal of the Buffer Zone restrictions and ‘free’ expansion of the residential and industrial districts and farmland were again possible in Athienou. Direction of growth was a critical issue as land use within the Buffer zone remains restricted. Namely these included vertical growth, high rise or below ground, horizontal elevated or underground connections between Greek controlled areas, airways linking common-interest areas: agricultural lands or urban areas found in T/C areas, G/C areas, UN controlled areas or even further UK controlled areas.

On a second level, moving forward in time, functioning masterplans of the area were designed that were based on scenarios of removal of the Buffer Zone restrictions. The proposals were based on the assumption that had Cyprus not been split, Athienou would be a growing urban centre midway between Nicosia to Larnaca and Ayia Napa, a gateway to the southern coasts towards the Mesaoria Valley and an important agricultural centre. The main issues that were questioned related to ways that the masterplan proposals could mediate between the urban districts of Nicosia at the west and Larnaca at the east, potentially forming a ‘Garden city’ type of development or taking an altogether different role relating to infrastructure or energy production.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Overall, the 2013 Visiting School, with 40 participating students, responded to scenarios of substantial growth of Athienou within its restricting boundaries today, in a way that after a possible political solution that specific growth could be reassembled and accommodated in the newly incorporated areas that would be accessible to Athienou. Avoiding to pretend that the divisions were not there, the aim was to create a growth scenario that would either answer to the main problem of expansion or bring forth the dystopian urban constructs that can arise from similar restrictive situations.


 

AA Cyprus Visiting School 2013 Directors
Pavlos Fereos, Kostas Grigoriadis, Michail Georgiou, Alkis Dikaios

Teams & Students work presented here
Metabolic Verdure: Christos Antonopoulos, George Voniatis, Miranda Corcoran, Chris Lo
Not A Slum: Ellie Shouer, Panagiotis Hatzisergis, Andreas Tsestos, Konstantina Avraamidou, Natasa Kitiri
Safe Haven: Nikolas Kourtis, Stan Mlynski, Petros Antoniou, Despo Panayidou
Smugnet: Ilina Krousovski, Daphnie Kosti, Nikolas Zembashis, Dakis Panayiotou

The AA Cyprus Visiting School is hosted at the University of Nicosia – School of Architecture and is sponsored by the Cyprus Architects Associations.

For more info and applications visit: http://cyprus.aaschool.ac.uk/
or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AACYVS


SOURCE: AA CYPRUS VISITING SCHOOL

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