Jingyi Zhang

In response to the long-term division and on-going ethnonational conflict between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities, this thesis envisions a Cypriot art museum as a non-partisan space through which to encourage communication, and express and develop shared identities.

Through the design of an art museum, this thesis aims to explore formal manipulation strategies that can be utilised in architecture to transform elements within the urban fabric that are manifestations of the separation, such as the UN buffer zone border in Nicosia, into a hybrid form that encourages new dialects of unity and a common heritage.

These physical manifestations of separation are engrained in the urban fabric of Nicosia city. And they have contributed to the city’s hybrid idiosyncrasies and a spatial language that currently shifts between conflict and peace, stasis and metamorphosis, abnormal and normal.

The art museum exists in the abandoned Nicosia international airport, which is in the middle of the buffer zone and is 8km away from the walled Nicosia city.  By introducing art to this war-torn site, this thesis would like to encourage contemplations of the past and future.

For a comprehensive understanding of the project, please visit my @studio page.

Visit @studio:
https://at.studio/msdthesis_2020sm2_studio04#model=23889c50-2b22-11eb-bfd7-03fcfbd77f6d