The green line is an entity which is both embedded into the land while also simultaneously separating it. It is woven into our urban fabric, and is thus woven into our culture and our history. In this piece, I focus on a neighborhood within the downtown area of the capitol Nicosia, an area located right by the green line.
This pavilion is a digital translation of my woven piece in part 2, composed of 10 repeated patterns: 5 inspired by traditional patterns from villages of the island, and 5 of my own patterns developed so far during the project.
The structure, quite literally, wraps around the city’s urban fabric through its structure which intertwines, enters, and submerges entire buildings. The world in between exists at the interface between the buildings and the sky. Spanning the width of no mans land, this megastructure can be viewed from afar, explored from within, and be trekked across to a distant place.
Walking entriely above and across the pavilion, one can oversee the variation of life across the entirety of no mans land, viewing both the built up as well as the the abandoned and neglected historical structures spanning from the capitol to Morphou in the West and Capadokia in the East.
The goal of the project was to address a currently charged socio-political issue within a chosen city, and develop the project through research but also using different experimental processes each week as a means of artistic expression. The project is thus a culmination of research and work across various disciplines including poetry, film, drawing, and sculpture.
I focused my project on Nicosia, the capital of my home country - Cyprus. Since 1974 the Cyprus Issue continues to be an open wound for the country and its people. The invasion of 1974 left a third of the island illegally occupied, displacing an estimated 210,000 people and resulting in the division of the island to this day. The green line is a physical entity that divides the country and runs through the capital, Nicosia. To this day, Nicosia remains the only divided capital in the world. Walking along the green line, one can see abandoned buildings and homes left untouched since the time of the invasion. Many of them are slowly decaying after being abandoned and exposed to natural elements for decades. These buildings are an integral part, as well as an important reminder, of our history.
This project explores ways in which we can revive these abandoned areas. Over a three month period, interviews were conducted with people who lived through the invasion and who spoke of their memories of the currently occupied region. Traditional Cypriot patterns from craft arts were also looked at for design inspiration, and were reproduced in the context of each week’s delivery.
