Until the early 1900s, the City of Nicosia was limited to the area within the Venetian walls with only three wall gate accesses to the City’s interior.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a number of administrative buildings were moved outside the walls and land was divided into individual plots to the south and west. Openings were made on the walls allowing passages in the form of bridges to connect the City within the walls with the new areas.

The concept behind the proposal takes the form of a dynamic architectural intervention, which is only a smaller part of a larger urban planning strategy: the realization of the urban axis from the historical central of Nicosia (Eleftheria square) to the presidential palace (new City centre) that aims to unify the old part of the City to the new.

The site is situated in the heart of the most critical infrastructural programs (House of Representatives, State Museum of Art, Cultural Centre, State Theatre) along the urban access aims to create a landmark, attracting a variety of multicultural and multidimensional programmatic and infrastructural activities that aim to restore and revitalize the City’s centre, transcending it into a dynamic public space symbolic of the administrative role of the urban centre of the capital, Nicosia.

The reconstruction of the area of the Old GSP aspires to establish “a main core”, point of reference, City plaza injected with a variety of recreational areas, green spaces, as well as underground car parks that will serve the above as well as the greater area of the urban centre including the commercial centre of the walled City of Nicosia.

The use of the “walls” as a conceptual tool “re-position” within the site (old – new) boundaries, stretched, reformed and finally transformed to a multi-layered “hybrid terrain” of social, infrastructural and programmatic qualities becomes the point of reference of the Capital, opening into the City / public revealing its “hidden secrets” and vice versa.

The multidimensional, topological design of the proposal interweaves in several levels with the City’s existing “fabric” accessing, absorbing and allowing uninterrupted flow of movement and programme “new and old” to unify, interact and co-exist within the new dynamic urban space.

The aim is to enable a unique multi cultural social network of infrastructural, spatial and programmatic elements to co-exist within a new dynamic “hybrid space”, unifying old and new, providing for a missing social “Landmark” in the heard of the City’s capital.