Stasys Museum

Text description provided by the architects. Stasys Museum is located in Panevėžys, Lithuania, in the northern part of the city center. The main goal of the project was to enhance city development by creating a high-quality public environment that enriches the city center. It focuses on serving the public interest by improving the quality of life and promoting cultural awareness and artistic expression within a democratic, communal space. Additionally, the museum seeks to establish itself as a leader in public services through superior content and functionality. To create the structure of the building, IMPLMNT architects sought inspiration not only in the context but also in the artworks of Stasys Eidrigevičius to whom the museum is dedicated. Stasys Eidrigevičius is a world-famous interdisciplinary artist born in 1949 in Lithuania, Panevėžys district. Therefore, the code for the spatial result is a three-word key expressed by the artist in his open letter to the architects participating in the competition: simplicity, logic, and fantasy. Architects express fantasy through the elements that are foreseen both on the outside and inside of the building, and through this architects encode the "touch of Stasys Eidrigevičius" in the building.

Two main motives were noticed in the works of Stasys Eidrigevicius. The continuity [of lines or shapes] and the interaction of the objects with each other, their connection, and transformation. On that basis, the designed solutions are substantiated - on connections and surfaces. The artist uses metaphor as an instrument of artistic expression, and therefore moderately encoded metaphors are also used in the spaces of the designed building. The orientation of the building is thought very carefully, such a layout on the plot naturally organizes a large public space on the south side of the plot. In this space, there is a volume that has the function of a non-commercial cinema hall which is what the city's inhabitants would very much like to have. Before the museum in the plot, there was a movie theater that eventually became a part of the image of the place. Therefore people consider cinema a local value, and this function only complements the newly designed cultural object.

The designed new public space acts as a bridge between the streets of Krantas and Respublika, at the same time creating a high-quality link between the western attraction centers and Oxbow Lake. The project's public space consists of two zones - active leisure in the North and the creative urban in the South. Outdoor spaces include an exposition, cafe, and a zone for different kinds of events: outdoor cinema, concerts, performances, and street art. The functions of the building consist of the museum and exhibition halls spread over two floors, one floor is dedicated to education and administration, and the small hall, currently functioning as an entrance space, in the second phase will become a space dedicated to exhibitions related to the media. Responding to the shape and aesthetics of the building, the materiality of the facades is laconic. Two types of textured concrete [dotted and linear pattern] and a glazed facade system were chosen.