The 34,500 square-feet New Acropolis Museum mission is to improve the manner in which the invaluable Greek ancient ruins are presented to millions of visitors each year. It is intended both as an upgrade and inviting. Sited only 800 feet from the famous Parthenon, the museum will be the most audacious building ever erected so close to the ancient. Bernard Tschumi was selected as the caretaker in the second competition for the design of the museum.

But the problem appears when archaeologists uncovered an early Christian town at the site. A dilemma because it is important to keep the museum adjacent to the Acropolis as possible, but any area near the Acropolis is containing important archaeological ruins when excavated. And then it was decided to leave the archaeological sites where they are, and to build the museum above them. “The Parthenon was the highest point of culture and worship, the museum is a place that records those achievements. The museum will stage the work of that era while asserting a new identity.” says Tschumi.

His design climaxed with a glass structure which will one day house the Parthenon Marbles when the British government is finally surrendered to return those in its true posseser. The Greek Embassy in London said, “With this project, which does cost a lot of money, we’re simply manifesting in a practical way our commitment to completing this project in the expectation that the Parthenon sculptures will grace the new rooms of the museum in Athens. This shows our determination to forge ahead.” The design focuses with three concepts comprise of turn the limitations of the site into an architectural advantage, providing a simple and precise museum using mathematical and conceptual clarity of ancient Greece.

Light

More than in the regularity of museum, the New Acropolis Museum has special light. Not only because daylight in Athens unlike in London, Berlin or even Bilbao (Hmm, Guggenheim), the need of lighting the sculpture is different from painting or drawings. You can say that the museum is an anti-Bilbao. A key feature of Tschumi’s offering is the incorporation of natural light into the building, providing pleasant lighting for viewing the curvy details of the Parthenon sculptures.

Movement

The visitor’s circulation forms a three-dimension loop, affording an architectural promenade with a rich spatial experience extending from the archeological excavations to the Parthenon Marbles and back through the Roman period. It gives time journey sensation as dimension of architecture and of this museum in particular. With over 10,000 visitors daily, exploring the museum and examining the artifacts is conceived to be of prior clarity.

Tectonic and Programmatic

The museum’s first floor has an auditorium and lobby between which a wide ramp levels up to the second floor. Transparent sections in the ramp’s floor allow visitors to look carefully at the exposed archaeological remains below. Along the sides of the ramp and as freestanding installations there will be artifacts collected from the Sanctuary of the Nymphs, the Sanctuary of Asklepios, and somewhere on the slopes of the Acropolis, also there are temporary exhibition spaces, retail, and all support facilities.

The second is a large, double-height trapezoidal plate that holds the finds of the Archaic Period, from 800-500 B.C., in a 21,100 square feet area characterized by architectural columns. A mezzanine welcomes a bar and restaurant with views towards the Acropolis, and a multimedia auditorium, with a large terrace spanning northward offers panoramic views of the Acropolis and the city of Athens.

The third floor will be devoted to space anticipating the return of the treasures Elgin took, many which date back to the Parthenon’s beginning. It is a rectangular gallery, enclosed in glass to ensure the proper air and light controls for these objects from ancienity and a direct view of the Acropolis above, with the exact geometry and harmonious dimensions of the columned Parthenon, providing an appropiate context for understanding the accomplishments of the Parthenon complex itself.

Bernard Tschumi has his own reason for people accusation as the museum is too contemporary, “Some people have said it is disrespectful to the Parthenon not to have Doric columns (on the new museum), but I am not interested in imitating the Parthenon. I am interested in (achieving) that level of perfection in my buildings, and for early twenty-first-century architecture to match it in its own way.”

The international competition was headed by the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, a private organization working in the public interest and monitored by the Greek Ministry of Culture. The President of the OANMA is Dimitrios Pandermalis, who also officiate the Director of Archaeological Excavations at the University of Dion and Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Thessaloniki. The Greek government chose Tschumi’s design because of the faith that his building will give back the pieces. Until now, the most Britain’s annoying arguments refusing to retur the marbles is the Greece’s lack of an appropiate place to host them.

“We asked, ‘How can we provide a building which is as representative to our contemporary sensibility and technology as the Parthenon was at its time,’ architecture is not about form, but about defining a goal or concept. There is no sentimentality in it. You cannot be intimidated,” said Tschumi.

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