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Architects: Praktika
- Area: 2916 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Gabija Strockyte
Text description provided by the architects. Heritage Context - In 2023 young emerging Lithuanian architect duo Dalia Puodziute Seniuniene & Julius Seniunas executed a pavilion entitled ‘Atlas - ‘Vilnius 200 years ago’ as a part of the celebration of Vilnius city 700th anniversary in Lithuania.
Lithuanian National Museum announced an open call for proposals to design a temporary pavilion to host a very important and sensitive exposition which should step out of the enclosed spaces of the museum and enter the city park in front of the museum building - in a UNESCO heritage old town of Vilnius, just in front of the Gediminas Castle hill. Succeeding to propose a new way of museum - an open exposition dispersed in the New Arsenal park, the project by an architects duo became a reality in the Spring of 2023. Throughout half a year, the temporary pavilion ‘Atlas’ hosting an exhibition of Vilnius city 200 years ago became the most visited exhibition of the Lithuanian National Museum. The temporary pavilion inhabited a never-seen-before model of Vilnius city meticulously recreated from recently discovered historical maps and drawings from the archives that the Lithuanian National Museum discovered and have brought to the daylight to compose this specific exhibition.
Dispersed type of the pavilion - Forming a strict grid of 16 objects scattered at the New Arsenal park intersecting with the existing park system as well as historical artifacts within the archeological context, the pavilion Atlas generated a series of diverse mediums to enable visitors to explore different layers of the historical exhibition material. The main 3D printed model of Vilnius city was supported with ambient sound as well as historical narratives and video projections, recreated visuals were exposed on the 4 Walls of the pavilion, and Rotonda hosted a historical map of Vilnius city printed on the inside of the curtain flowing in the wind.
The simple, yet curious organization of the objects reacting to different park objects and backdrops, activates the area. The scattered objects of the pavilion could be approached differently from different sides, creating a diversity of narratives and leaving space and options for the citizens and travelers to explore the exposition on their own. The amphitheater, Triptych, Rotonda, Walls, Forum, Flags, Stage, Info stands, etc. all became information carriers in an open-air museum, unified by the historical color of Vilnius old town as seen from above, imprinting the celebration of Vilnius 700th anniversary. It became not only the pavilion in a city but rather a city in a pavilion.
Adaptive reuse - The typology of a temporary pavilion always raises an essential question on how this structure could be reused. From the very start, it was designed in a way to be easily assembled, stored compactly, and smoothly reassembled in another situation. This enables the diversity of objects to create an ever-changing formula generating new scenarios in alternative contexts and is adaptive to different purposes/locations/aspirations.
