Venthos

VENTHOS is a museum of shipbuilding located in Volos, a seaside city centrally in the country. The museum has been placed in a coastal plot in the eastern boundaries of the city. The purpose of the designing the building and the configuration of the surrounding area, apart from its obvious museum function, is the conversion of the city’s termination into a civic reception center and conducting cultural events.

As far as the architectural synthetic principles of the museum flowing engravings ,that emanate from the street and end up in the view of the see, were been followed during the design process. This decision aims to lead the crowd coming from the centre of the city through a museum tour to the sea. The relief of the area seems to embrace the building and the shaped square that surrounds it, too, thus utilizing the difference of 4 meters from the level of the road to the sea level. The oblong curved path , that the floor plan follows, creates for the museum visitors horizon and vertical movements inside the building. In particular, the visitor makes a wave movement where the tour begins at the upper level, the he passes to the lower and guided by the architecture of the building ends again in the upper one but in a different position from the first one.

Another characteristic of the museum is the connection of the internal exhibition rooms with the view of the sea and the external environment in confrontation with the human scale and the museum exhibits. This relationship is achieved by the large glass surfaces on the three of the four facades of the buildings creating an illusion between the inside and the outside of the museum. Apart from these surfaces, other types of openings are not used to avoid the altering of the dynamic that they give to the composition. It is worth noting that despite the absense of smaller openings, oblong holes are there on the roof creating a game between shadow and light.

Finally, the formation of the building of the public space acquires a different interpretation by the creation of a atrium next to the road which is surrounded by the functions of the museum’s administration, the shop and the shaping of the pedestrian path in and above it.