Cultural Village in Lemba

Located in Lemba, a hilltop village overlooking the sea, the project spans in two nearby sites. The “Neighborhood of Creation” hosts painting and ceramics workshops with offices, while the “Neighborhood of Hospitality” offers dormitories, dining, and lounge areas. The new spaces come into dialogue with the existing traditional-style buildings. The inclined, folded metallic roofs of the workshops echo the gabled tiled roofs of the surrounding houses, and the vertical wooden frames of the new guesthouses stand alongside the tall windows of the preserved buildings. Wood, metal, and stone which were already strong elements of the place’s identity, are the main materials of the new structures.

In response to the competition call for the creation of a Cultural Village, the project focuses on the broader concept of the village as a spatial organism with distinct qualitative characteristics related to human scale, materials, and integration into the landscape. Pathways, semi-outdoor spaces, enclosed courtyards, squares and split-level terraces shape a familiar environment within the traditional fabric of the village, while also providing opportunities for encounters and exchange of experiences between its “inhabitants”, the locals and the visitors. Considering the owner’s request for light structures, the new buildings celebrate the notion of the ephemeral, the changeable, and the spontaneous. Shading screens, moving panels and attics enhance the flexible configuration of the interior spaces and their relationship with semi-outdoor and outdoor areas, thus encouraging the organization of cultural events of both local and broader significance, facilitating meaningful engagement with the local community and wider Cypriot society.

Lightweight constructions, composed of steel structural frames and dry construction systems, are chosen to meet the competition’s requirement for reversibility. Corrugated metal sheets, timber screens, glazed openings, and semi-transparent panels are used variously as partitions or roofing materials, enabling controlled interaction with light and the external environment. Pitched roofs offer the opportunity to create interior loft spaces and introduce dramatic overhead lighting. The proposed elaborate semi-permeable shelters function as containers of artistic creation and cultural expression, sometimes introverted, and at other times open and inviting to the broader community. The extended outdoor covered areas, the integration of porticoes and the strategic positioning of windows take advantage of the good climatic conditions the place offers for most of the time, thus reducing significantly throughout the year the use of mechanical services for heating or cooling the interior spaces.