architects:
archiplus project team:
Museology
MEP Consultants:
Landscape Design:
Lighting Design:
architects archiplus architects & associates
Marios Angelopoulos, Anny Galanou
Postscriptum
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The Digital Museum of Nea Smyrni is housed in the historic Galaxias building, at the heart of the city’s central square, and is conceived as an open, living space of memory, knowledge, and dialogue. Rather than operating as an isolated institution, the museum is embedded in the everyday life of the city, maintaining a strong relationship with the public realm, the local community, and contemporary urban culture.
Through the use of digital technologies, interactive applications, and multimedia storytelling, the museum presents history as a dynamic and evolving experience, engaging new generations and encouraging an active connection with the past.
The permanent exhibition narrates the history of Smyrna and the creation of Nea Smyrni, shaped by the traumatic event of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the subsequent formation of a new urban and social identity. The exhibition moves beyond a traditional object-based approach, adopting a human-centred and experiential narrative that focuses on personal stories, collective memory, and the deeper causes and consequences of historical events.
Organised into thematic sections and conceptual contrasts—such as past and present, loss and continuity, individual and collective—the exhibition employs digital prints, projections, soundscapes, interactive interfaces, and symbolic installations. Visitors are not passive observers but active participants, often seeing their own presence reflected within the narrative framework.
The exhibition aims to cultivate memory without nostalgia, understanding without didacticism, and emotional engagement without sentimentality, inviting reflection on identity, displacement, resilience, and the ongoing life of the city.
