AG Leventis Art Gallery and Apartments

The building mediates between the scale of historic Nicosia and the twenty-first century city to the south. The three storey gallery, embracing the entrance courtyard, forms a plinth to the sculptural apartment tower topped by a roof garden with spectacular views. The gallery is organised around an atrium with a timber-lined, bronze stair accessing the three public floors of galleries, auditorium and café. Judiciously orientated openings provide views to the city, connecting the collection of art and artefacts to a broader cultural context. Light shafts connect the upper gallery floors allowing the collection to be viewed in carefully controlled daylight. The Leventis Gallery houses a formerly private collection of Cypriot, Greek and European art on a site just outside Nicosia's sixteenth-century Venetian walls. The building, which includes a restaurant and ten apartments, is conceived as a stone sculpture, eroded to create courtyards, balconies and roof gardens with far reaching views.

The building mediates between the scale of historic Nicosia to the north and the twentyfirst century city to the south. The three storey gallery, embracing an entrance courtyard which opens to the street, forms a plinth to the sculptural apartment tower which is topped by a roof garden providing spectacular mountain views. The gallery is organised around a central atrium with a monolithic timberlined, bronzefinished steel stair giving access to the three public floors of galleries, auditorium and café. Judiciously orientated openings provide views to the city, connecting the collection of art and artefacts to a broader cultural context. The upper two gallery floors are connected by light shafts which allow the collection to be viewed in carefully controlled daylight from the rooflights which puncture the stepped, planted roof plains.

The building was been conceived as a monolithic stone sculpture cut away to create courtyards, terraces and roof gardens—precious sheltered and green outdoor spaces that are typical of the urban character of the old city. The eroded building form is inspired by the vernacular response to Cyprus's climatic challenges, creating a tenuous play between solid and void and generating a series of courtyards and gardens, both public and private, which connect to the street and the spectacular views to the Pentadaktylos Mountains to the north and resonate with both ancient and contemporary quarters of Nicosia. The Leventis Gallery is a sustainable exemplar demonstrating low energy design. The building fabric is well insulated and air-tight with high levels of exposed thermal mass and openings designed to minimise solar gains whilst providing excellent daylighting. Geothermal energy provides cooling/heating and hot water is generated by solar collectors.