Lighthouse Museum

Andros, Greece, 2014

This project involved the design of a museum dedicated to the network of Greek lighthouses and was located at the southest bound of Andros, across of Disvato lighthouse of Tinos. Our project engages with one of the most important debates in the design of contemporary museums, namely, narration versus experience, and at the end chooses side, as we consider more crucial the experienced-based perception of space.

The main design gesture entails two monolithic concrete walls that create a cross section in the mountain. Through this incision/cut on the mountain, three weather zones are created, namely a zone of strong wind and extreme weather conditions, a zone of circulation, protection and isolation, and a zone of stillness and lull.

This linear gesture sets the museum into a dialogue with the lighthouse on the opposition island. While the visitor moves through the museum, different visual escapes are discovered, and different viewing conditions are created due to the inclination of the retaining walls. The unstable, moving, and surprising frames that are offered are crucial, as the gaze to the lighthouse depends on the visitor position within the museum, but also on the changing weather conditions.

Another interesting feature of the museum is the existence of two entrances, one through the mountain and one through sea that create two-way movements with reversed starting and finishing points. This 2-way circulation channel ends in two opposite climaxes, namely, on the south, a balcony that gives the sense of hovering over the ocean and offers a panoramic view, and on the north, a narrow peak that leads to the mountain. The dominant staircase that unites the two entrances is being interrupted in every level to guide the visitors to the six exhibiting spaces, two for each way-in. The exhibited items include flashing beacons, cabin parts, mechanical designs, tools and naval equipment.

The design of the exhibiting spaces was based on the intention to take advantage and “manipulate” different sound and lighting conditions. This landmark-museum is characterised by the blurring of boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces, between exhibition and circulation spaces. It is a non-building, a semi-outdoor construction, an “abandoned skeleton” that waits for place and time to leave their mark.