Running since 2008 Swaida city sculpture exhibition creates opportunities for emerging and professional artists to be involved in a large scale community event promoting arts and culture.
Bringing the exhibition’s outdoor experience inside the building contains galleries for permanent and temporary exhibitions restoration and storage facilities.
Enhancing the cultural aspect of the city the project intended to re-invest an important zone of the city’s CBD where context contents ancient buildings that could be re-used as galleries for other kinds of arts.
The design concept of the building was a practical translation for the connotation of merging past and present. The basalt cores of the building interlaced with the minimalistic blocks of white-painted concrete forming a solid mass of old and new.

Natural Light & The Building
The interior space is a 7.2m double-height exhibition hall that is flexible and welcoming. With a front glazing facade the design enhances transparency providing the gallery with natural light. With different-sized windows scattering in an irregular pattern across the walls the dramatic design for these sections evoke a unique sense of place and complementing a building’s outward expression.
The lighting system was implemented to be easily re-setup once any artwork is replaced Innovatively the design creates the cable-mounted lights system to provide this flexibility.

Spaces & Circulation
Access to the store is through full height glazed pivoting doors on two levels from market square or directly from the valley street. The interior courtyards are specially designed to enhance the visual connection between all levels creating informal spaces to meet and interact evoking a rich built environment.

Note: The project was designed as a Donation to the Governorate of Swaida