AAA+U Architecture, Art and Urbanism

ITINERARY

Socrates Stratis won in 1996 the EUROPAN 4 competition, “At home in the city”, teamed with Kyriakos Koundouros on the Heraklion site in Greece (Crete). The project is being implemented (2006-2008).
Graduated in Architecture at the University of Cornell, USA in 1990 and in Urbanism at the University of Paris, Socrates Stratis has founded ‘AA + U’ - Partnership for Architecture Art and Urbanism in Nicosia, Cyprus, together with Maria Loizidou, artist.
Through his practice and research Socrates Stratis has been interested in hybrid structures of action that make possible the incorporation of social concerns in the sphere of architectural and artistic creativity as well as the participation of architects and artists in institutions dealing with urban issues. He has exhibited, part of his research in the 9th and 10th Biennales of Architecture in Venice in 2004, 2006 as well as in various publications.
He has participated in the design and implementation of projects such as residents, parks and public spaces. He has won several prizes in local and European architectural competitions.
Socrates Stratis is actually a lecturer at the Department of Architecture at the University of Cyprus where he teaches urban design.

LOCAL / TRANS-LOCAL

To put in productive tension programs that relate to the local area of the site and to the trans-local metropolitan or regional scale. To propose such coexistences by attempting to profit from the introduction of trans-local program in order to generate local dynamics.

Limassol (CY) - Old port

The design proposal deals with the issue of sustaining the presence of the city in a semiprivate touristic development of the old port of Limassol, by creating conditions of infiltration and accessibility to the sea. The design proposal investigates the relations between the city and the sea by documenting the geneology of urban elements that have facilitated an exchange between them. Such elements have been called “urban prosthesis” (prothèses urbaines) and became the base for the design in various scales.

BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

Encouraging a process based action in an urban-architectural scale. Such an action does not only have to do with the architectural objects but also with the design of relations between project actors in a non linear mode, with the use of architectural tools as facilitators for allowing the architectural project to be implemented.

Nicosia (CY) – Europe Park

The concept of the park is based on the dynamics generated by the oppositions between the ‘overexposed’ and the ‘introverted’. A sort of public private partnership in using and managing the public space is organised:
Emphasizing the tension between the visually exposed and the non-accessible existing cypress trees area ; Contrasting the experience of the user through a vertical path ; Enhancing accessibility to European public spaces and cultural information.

MANAGING COMPLEXITY

Form of complexity relates to the coexistence of diverse program as well as the coexistence of various urban scales. A third form of complexity has to do with the need of introduction into the design process forms of uncertainty and flexibility that relate to temporalities beyond the architectural project.

Limassol (CY) - Negotiated space

The project deals with the necessary conditions on an urban level that would encourage the creation of a metropolitan centrality.
The challenge is to put on a common platform the diverse priorities and references of the project actors, part of which is the church administration since the church owns most of the open space in the central area of the suburb. The proposal introduces new conditions of sharing of the open spaces that is left to negotiate with the various actors.

REPROGRAMMING PUBLIC SPACE

To make the public space shared by different users through different urban conditions. This was achieved by introducing new public program at strategic positions.

Nicosia (CY) - In two scales

The proposed design reinforces the important role Eleftheria Square plays in two scales: in the broader metropolitan city of Nicosia and the more local scale of the square and its specifics. With this proposal, the square becomes the pivot point between the Old and the New city and between the city and the moat: A new Eleftheria Square which is composed of a system of public spaces, each with its own character yet together creating a functional, perceptual as well as symbolic entity appropriate for one of the main squares of Cyprus.

Europan Generation, The reinterpreted city Catalogue
Editions: Cité de l’architecture and Europan, May 2007
224 colour pages, bilingual English/French


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