The project "Rainscape Stories" received the 2nd Prize at the Panhellenic Architectural Preliminary Design Competition “Regeneration of Pyrros Square”, in Ioannina, Greece, in 2018

The competition aimed to a design that would incorporate the central character of the square, its relation to the surrounding public buildings, park, Dodoni Avenue, the underground car park and the view to the lake, as a complete proposal in terms of functional, aesthetic, technical and economic aspects, incorporating the principles of environmental design.

The concept is based on the exploitation of a characteristic element of the city, rainwater, as an architectural narrator of a story unfolding through events.

The narration, through historic memory, creates zones of use inherent to the urban character of the square, which, in its evolution, are mutated and linked to the natural environment and relief, intensifying the sense of the landscape of the lake. The gradual integration of planting, through various forms, contributes to each event, introducing new morphological data, either by exploiting the stock of the current square or by incorporating local indigenous species.

Aiming to design a square with an experiential character, the architectural proposal creates dipoles of urban-natural, flat-relief, movement-posture, strict-free, hard-soft, accompanied by basic zones of uses - events recalling spatial qualities registered in collective memory as public life.

Additionally, a central open space, featuring characteristics of a contemporary urban square and loans of the adjacent areas of the city, is being organised near the building of Oasis, allowing its unobstructed view from a distance.

The architectural manipulations adopt principles of environmental design through water management, planting and use of water-permeable materials, solar gain – shading and the soundscape approach as a parameter of urban design.