VOROKLINI COASTAL PROMENADE

Margarita Danou

The project lies between an existing resort development and the coastal edge of Voroklini. The design introduces a promenade that offers leisure activities for the public while creating a transitional zone between the private developments and the public beach.

The project allows for an unselfconscious succession of special public events onto the coastal landscape, allowing each to maintain a distinct logic of pace, scale and expression. A series of platforms, canopies and lighting elements are unified by a meandering path that loosely follows the coastline, widening and narrowing to create a series of specific places along the way. The walkway introduces an element of ‘urbanising’ of the coastal space through layering and terracing and the creation of resting areas. The path itself plays against the curves of the coast. Different materials interchange along as it evolves. A new edge is introduced – hard and defined against the beach or else soft, receding into the sand.

The entire walkway system of timber, stone and monolithic pebbled concrete is set lightly on the beach on a concealed structural system that allows natural movement of the sea and the sand. The walkway floats or sinks into the rising and receding unstable landscape according to the vagaries of the weather and naturally changing coastline. The scale and finesse of the furniture signal a deliberate invitation to occupation and establish a continuity with the design principles that have been applied to the timber platforms and louvered canopies.

Along the promenade is an open resting-place with the sea on one side and an artificial lake on the other that echoes the presence of a long-gone coastal lagoon. Changing and washroom facilities are accommodated in a narrow concrete building with timber screens and a kiosk contained in a wooden shell opens up to reveal its interior.


2004 - Cyprus State Prize of exceptional Architectural Work
2005 - Nominated for the European Mies Van Der Rohe Prize

Project Gallery

PHOTO 1 - Coastal Promenade - Layering of surfaces (2).jpg

PHOTO 2 Coastal Promenade - Wooden platflorm and Louvred canopy .jpg

PHOTO 3 Coastal Promenade - Changing rooms and Kiosk 3.jpg

PHOTO 4 Coastal Promenade - Changing Rooms and KiosK 2.jpg

PHOTO 5 Coastal Promenade - Stone pathway and Changing rooms 2.jpg

PHOTO 6 Coastal Promenade - Re-configuraltion of the Coastal Location Verki into walkay an water basin .jpg

Margarita Danou CY

35 Iosif Hadjiosif Ave. | 2027 Nicosia