“OPEN” PUBLIC BUILDING
HONORABLE MENTION – Architectural Competition for the Building Complex of Public Services (former Papafi Stables) – Thessaloniki – 2018
PROJECT TEAM:
PROJECT ARCHITECTS: V.GHIKAPEPPAS-D.LOUKOPOULOS, architects NTUA
Collaborators Architects: E.Mpilla, C.Tsironi
STUCTURAL ENGINEERING: H. Gantes
EM ENGINEERING: K. Georgakopoulos
GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING: N. Roussos
TRAFFIC STUDY: K. Kepaptsoglou
COMPETITION PROMOTER: Municipality of Thessaloniki – Greece
The proposal explores and focuses on 4 themes, approaching corresponding spatial concepts, such as:
1. The open public building as a management of the flows and accesses within a building formation, with a receptive and participatory role
2. The welfare character of the building structure as a ‘metaphor’ of the protection and care of human being and behavior
3. Kindergarten Educational Ecosystem defining environments of productive creativity, avocation and intimacy.
4. Intermediate outdoor space that interconnects, penetrates and interacts actively with the urban landscape, by defining a spatial identity of natural, cultural and urban environment.
The question of unifying all mixed uses of a complex building program, into a unique architectural gesture, is encountered as a spiral structure. Two protected centers (open space of the kindergarden ecosystem and main exterior place) and the wraparound structure (office building) defines a linear frontal development, as boundaries of urban block. This arrangement opens the urban block to the south and the sunrise area, creating a centripetal living space, while defining the severe fronts of the northern part. It is not considered as an enclosed urban block, but as a formation of a spiral linearity, encompasses conceptually and functionally an organizational center.
At the same time, the genesis of this spiral formation, from the point of “space of memory” and to its ending, which refers to the “children’s world”, both as geometry and symbolism, emphasize the fundamental components, that every society should take care of.
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