Annex D
Towards a New Design for a New Museum
1. The small museum on the rock of the Acropolis
was the first museum to be built in modern Athens; though twice
expanded, however, it has proved totally inadequate and inappropriate
as regards to its location so close to the Parthenon.
1.1 The necessity of building a new museum
became pressing in the light of new approaches in museum design
and policy, and particularly following the extensive preservation
works of the Acropolis monuments which have been undertaken in
the last 25 years. A new Acropolis Museum was necessary for the
protection and proper exhibition of unique sculptures and artifacts.
2. Thus, the Greek Government in the last
25 years took a number of initiatives towards this goal, including
the organisation of an international architectural competition,
which led to awarding the first prize to the architects M Nicoletti
and L Passarelli. For a variety of reasons these efforts proved
fruitless.
2.1 A decisive step towards the realisation
of the project was the establishment by the Greek Parliament,
by consensus, of the Organisation for the Construction of the
New Acropolis Museum (OANMA) as a private legal entity supervised
by the Minister of Culture. OANMA, which is now responsible for
the building of the museum, co-operates with the Melina Mercouri
Foundation (Jules Dassin, President) which has as one of its main
objectives the promotion of the new museum.
2.2 By mid-1999, OANMA was ready to present
the bid of the project on the basis of a revised design of Nicoletti-Passarelli
which had been offered by the Melina Mercouri Foundation. An unexpected
development altered these plans, however. The archaeological excavations
on the site (Makriyanni) unearthed important ruins of the first
and seventh centuries AD (mainly Roman and early Christian) which
were considered, in most part, worth preserving. The Central Archaeological
Council and the Minister of Culture decided that the new museum
should co-exist with an in situ underground museum of Roman findings,
and therefore a new building programme and a new architectural
study were required. It is estimated now that the Museum of the
Acropolis will consist of about 15,000 square metres.
3. In view of these developments, OANMA,
which has to observe the relevant European directives (92/50/EEC),
decided to launch a "restricted procedure" in two stages:
first, OANMA will issue and publicise an announcement, inviting
interested co-operating architects and civil and mechanical engineers
to send in their dossiers, out of which five to 15 candidates
will be selected, on the basis of their qualifications, by an
international Evaluation Committee. In the second stage, those
candidates will be judged by the same Committee on the basis of
design proposals that they will be asked to submit. The best entry
will be awarded with the final design study. A compensation of
about 120,000 US dollars to the first three best entries and of
about 30,000 US dollars to the rest will be offered.
3.1 The Evaluation Committee is being appointed
by OANMA and consists of eminent Greek and non-Greek members (mainly
architects as well as engineers and archaeologists). It is expected
that the Committee will meet in Athens for three to five days
on each of two occasions—in May and in September/October
2000.
3.2 The target date for the completion of
the museum is the early summer of 2004, at a time when Athens
will be preparing to host the Olympic Games.
Sotiris Mousouris
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