Pandemic Architecture, an International Ideas Competition curated by the Design Ambassador for ARCHISEARCH.gr,  invited the creative community to open up a dialogue and create a think tank, looking for ideas from the architectural and design community about the future of the living, the workspace, the public space and the tourism industry after the outbreak of Covid-19.

Sunday Variations was longlisted in top 50 out of 440 projects.

‘Sunday variations’ – an approach to a pandemic Orthodox Church, the proposal looks for the way people participate religious services during pandemic. In times of pandemic, society tries to answer the psychosomatic needs of its people. The progress of work, the expression of art, loneliness, creation, the natural environment, the tend of people meeting.

In the Orthodox Church, holy liturgy is the exceptional moment of true communion of persons and the fulfillment of their encounter with God. Participating in the holy liturgy is an inner personal experience formed by specific historic spatial qualities as well as the presence of the byzantine art.

The proposal begins to deal with social distancing in church attendance. It borrows for the beginning the archetypal topography of the Greek countryside with the imaginary network of small deserted ecclesiastical units-chapels. We begin to transcribe this kind of chapels unit into a new  pandemic church unit that offers the isolation needed while it sums up all these characteristics that contribute the experienced memory of  gathering. We test the composition of these units in a new type of church with terms that require social distancing and security measures. Site suggested for this application could be an urban void, the sea, the countryside.

A solid roof is the exclusive binder. The chapel-units are based on pre-existing material or natural substrate. The interspersed surrounding solid boundaries take part as a continuous entrance with the largest possible degree of free movement for persons approaching and departing. The proposal deals with the demands of a pandemic crisis regarding safety rules and conditions of hygiene, ventilation and distance.

At the same time, the proposal attempts to transfer to these conditions the personal mystical experience of congregation, the spatial elements, the quality of  light, the functional participation of the Byzantine art and the iconographic program, the physical presence of  persons. We end up managing material and design relations as well as  historical memories and references. In our proposal the presence and meeting  of human person is the source of real inner joy and life.

Facts & Credits

Participants  Kotorkis Kostis
                        Pallas Emmanouil
                        Christou Anastasis
                        Bargiotas Alexios
Country         Greece

The project was longlisted in top 50 out of 440 projects.

The impact of Pandemic Architecture competition on the international architectural community was astonishing, with the number of registrations to exceed 800, with the final proposals to exceed 400 and with participants from more than 60 different countries.
Results will be officially announced on the 25th of September.

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Check out the open call and the jury here!


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