Visitor center for Architectural miniatures park
Newly completed architectural miniatures park will open its doors in August 2016 at the black sea coastal resort Shekvetili.
Nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2017.
This small Georgian village has already enjoyed a grand opening of the nearby-located 10000-seat concert arena, a five star hotel and an amusement park is also underway. Recently developing coastal region will be able to host thousands of tourists and offer them sandy beaches, seaside eucalyptus forests and unique leisure infrastructure. Among them one can visit a thematic park, ''Georgia in miniatures''. Park is full of architectural monuments, which have been gathered from all around Georgia in 1:25 scale. Park is aimed to display rich architectural heritage of the country.
Laboratory of architecture #3, a 10 year practicing, Georgian architectural company, has developed a park layout and a visitor center building. It is located at the entrance and serves as a kind of entree for the whole area.
It is important to mention that the building is a reconstruction of a cylindrical concrete volume of the former sewer cleaning facility, which was never used and was standing as an abandoned 30-meter diameter concrete drum. Visitor goes through a poetic space, flanked from one side by the 60 meter long curved form black painted bamboo fence and a ribbed fiber concrete pavilion on the other. Bamboo is a very native material in local vernacular architecture as it is very cheap and easy to find throughout the region.
However painting it in black is locally the first experimental attempt of this kind. The use of radical color continues in painting the educational space of the outdoor amphitheater, which is yellow and in blue staircase heading to the rooftop terrace. The characteristic intensive light of the sun plays the crucial role in forming of the dynamic and colorful composition.
