KYMA
Academic design project 2011
The challenge in this project was to design a bus stop in a random point in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. The location I chose for it, is Aristotle’s Square(at the height of the Metropoleos Str) because there is a large open space in the square directly overlooking the sea of Thermaikos.
The inspiration arose from the intriguing formations that may result due to a sea’s wave penetrating the place: a huge wave bursts onto the Square and jets of water form a shelter-bus stop. This is also how I came up with the name of this urban object: KYMA (means wave in Greek).It has a length of 6,50 meters, width 5,00 and its maximum height is 3,60m. The dimensions are intentionally larger than those of an average bus stop, firstly because the area has to serve a large number of people and mainly because the KYMA’s designing purpose, which was to work as an artistic intervention in the region and therefore the volume required it to be imposing and majestic.
KYMA is supported through six core rods of steel for durability and high strength.
Perpendicular to the main frame there will be further supporting elements arranged in a way so as to be paralleled with the game the water makes when bursting into a wave. As far as the lighting is concerned, there will be high efficiency LED at the beginning and at the end of each of the six basic supporting rods. On the base(start) of the KYMA, the light will lighten towards the side of the sea, in order to point out through the ground that this is the wave’s source. The lighting at the end of the object’s covered surface will point to the road of Metropoleos, showing the course the wave would have while dissolving. The voids between the steel rods will covered with sheets of energy reflective glass. Their shade will vary slightly between tones of grey. The darker ones will be put on the upper surface to make it infrared radiation impervious and reduce the corresponding solar one. The fact that the material is both transparent and has a variation in this color, associatively refers to reflections that the water makes through the sun during the wave.