panos nikolaidis design










 

 

 

PROJECT

Ephemeral Structures in the City of Athens

CLIENT

International Competition, Honorable Mention

DATE

2002

Reflections in Form: The Cube Pavilion

Nestled between nature and abstraction, the Cube is a hybrid structure that blurs the line between art and utility.
Designed as both an immersive installation and a contemplative lounge, its angular geometry and optional glass enclosure invite visitors to engage with light, shadow, and landscape.
Transparent walls and ceilings dissolve boundaries, creating a floating experience where architecture becomes atmosphere.
Whether hosting quiet reflection or dynamic gatherings, the pavilion transforms with its surroundings—an ever-changing canvas of serenity and spectacle.

 

Expand Your Horizons
The Olympic Ideals must transcend the realm of aspiration and enter the immediacy of lived reality. To achieve this, perception itself must be expanded. Art and Science, entwined, become the Trojan horse of awareness—vehicles through which the city dweller learns to resist the seductions of spectacle and the manipulations of an Orwellian media landscape. Information, absorbed through play and participation, becomes power.
The Trojan as Urban Device
Drawing upon both myth and digital metaphor, the project reimagines the Trojan horse as an architectural lure. The site itself becomes the spectacle, entangling the inhabitant in a game where leisure disguises learning. Neither spectator nor star, the visitor is instead participant and co-creator, moving through the landscape as though on a catwalk, discovering layers of meaning embedded in the urban fabric.
Transparency and Contradiction
A glass enclosure frames the city as artifact, jewel, and backdrop. Like Lycabettus Hill or the Acropolis, the transparent box elevates Athens into exhibition, controlling light, sound, and shade while remaining formally unobtrusive. The city is refracted through glass, simultaneously obvious and enigmatic, a shopfront window onto collective memory.
Multiplicity of Thresholds
Entries and exits proliferate, each offering a distinct spectacle. The landscape folds and wraps upon itself, generating semi-open exhibition spaces where Athens performs as both stage and actor. The visitor’s task is to unwrap, inhabit, and reinterpret—carrying this expanded horizon back into the city beyond. In this way, the Trojan becomes not a deception but a revelation: a new type of exhibition space, a civic game of perception.