Towards Unity: Suturing Cyprus

By:  | March - 23 - 2016

Honorable Mention
2016 Skyscraper Competition

Lin Rujia
China

Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean is a divided country between Greeks and Turks. Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus and it’s the only city divided in two in the world since 1974.

The demographic composition of Nicosia consists of Turks who live in northern cities and Greeks who live in southern cities. There were lots of public spaces and facilities in the “UN Buffer Zone” before Cyprus was divided and people needed them. But at the same time, the “UN Buffer Zone” became a barrier between the two parts because of it’s a limit of height. Both Turks and Greeks in Nicosia are looking forward to a unified country.

This project changes the horizontal “UN Buffer Zone” and public spaces near it to a vertical direction. Both Turks and Greeks ordinary life will have an intersection in the new skyscrapers

There are three design points of the “Unify Monument” skyscrapers: 1) Looking at it for each time, people in Cyprus could remember those periods that Cyprus were split into two parts. 2) Water is one of the most important elements for people in Nicosia. Water in vertical “UN Buffer Zone” can make people know that we connected the two parts with “water”, and this is an important function of the skyscrapers. 3) These skyscrapers distribute in all the main areas of Cyprus, which are passed through by the “UN Buffer Zone”. So the whole Cyprus will be “sutured” by these skyscrapers because all the people will go into them for public spaces. All main cities in Cyprus will build one skyscraper like Nicosia and each one will set up a corresponding relationship with the part of “UN Buffer Zone” in each city, and then, the whole country will be sutured by these skyscrapers.

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