ASSEMBLAGE



Authors: AFTER PARTY architecture
Size: 4 000 m2
Program: Arts and Cultural Centre
Location: Panevezys, Lithuania
Status: Competition, 3rd Prize
Year: 2018



















The New Art and Community Centre seeks to create a fully open environment - an urban fabric that ensures engaging, active and inspiring interaction with culture. The proposed art centre is a platform split into equal modules, where each of them carry a distinctive theme, program or architectural expression to ensure the variety of typologies, activities and experiences.









The city grew mostly under the soviet rule therefore its urban fabric mixes low density old town buildings with large volumes erected in soviet times. Among many factories and housing blocks, most of the public buildings were also built during those times.










Throughout Lithuania the architecture that was built in the period of soviet occupation is commonly understood as the representation of the regime thus its architectural value, contemporary use or possible readaptation is often rejected due to remaining associations.











We aimed to discover ways of preserving and integrating the decomissioned cinema into the future urban fabric. As an act of sustainability, preservation does not have to be a conservation of the existing, but rather open and creative improvement in order to accommodate contemporary functions.



















The assemblage of original site artefacts, new volumes and symbols, in a former cinema territory shape an open source system which not only serves the city and its community needs but becomes an open platform for their creativity to take place and allows to be changed, expanded or improved. 






















The museum subdivided into equal but distinct 10x10 m modules seeks to erase boundaries between outdoor and indoor spaces, allowing them to merge and extend beyond limits. This way the site loses the clear hierarchy and becomes entirely open to the surrounding.

























Panevėžys is a post-industrial Eastern European city that suffered
big population decline in the recent decades. Aiming to bring positive
change to its development and revive the cultural life of the town the
city decided to devote a plot of an old soviet cinema to build a new  cultural centre. The building is dedicated and named after a local exile artist Stasys Eidrigevičius. 

The New Art and Community Centre seeks to create a fully open environment - an urban fabric that ensures engaging, active and inspiring interaction with culture. The proposed art centre is a platform split into equal modules, where each of them carry a distinctive theme, program or architectural expression to ensure the variety of typologies, activities and experiences. 

Throughout Lithuania and other Eastern European countries the architecture that was built in the period of soviet occupation is widely understood as the representation of the oppressive regime thus its architecture value, contemporary use, or possible readaptation is often rejected due to political reasons. This position chooses to ignore contemporary concepts of sustainable development and circular economy which encourages reuse and refurbishment instead
of consumeristic demolish-rebuild strategies.

We aim to challenge this widely spread view by proposing ways of preserving and integrating soviet buildings into future urban fabrics. However preservation does not have to be a conservation of existing,
but rather open and creative reconstruction in order to accommodate contemporary functions. 

The new structures get embedded into the preserved preexisting  layers of the territory to frame, expose and give new meaning to it.  The assemblage of original site artifacts, new volumes and symbols
in a former “GARSAS” cinema territory form an open source system which not only serves the city and its community needs but becomes an open platform for their creativity to take place and allows to be changed, expanded or improved.

The site subdivided into equal but unique squares loses a clear  hierarchy and allows to become entirely open to the surrounding. The 360o orientation to the city ensures the attractiveness and connection  to different parts of it. The Assemblage becomes a surreal SEMC mini city - a sign of new architecture - recognisable and distinctive symbol for city of Panevėžys.