Restoration of Zahariou Cultural Center – Piraeus

RESTORATION OF ZAHARIOU CULTURAL CENTRE

ADDITION OF MULTI-STOREY CAR PARK – MICROLIMANO COAST OF PIRAEUS

1^st prize of architectural competition – 2015

architectural design:   A-G ARCHITECTS

V.Ghikapeppas – K. Nasopoulou – D.Paraskeva – M.I.Tzannes – C.Tsironi

consultant: A. Anastasopoulou

It was requested that a multi-storey car park was located adjacent to a remarkable example of the Greek modernism, the Zahariou Cultural Center (architect I. Liapis). The new addition didn’t intend a confrontation or a comparison to the existing architecture but a neutralization of its own materiality. The landscape is implemented as a tool resourcefully as a sliding and folding field operation, rather than a mere depository surface. Space is manipulated with tilling and penetrating gestures in order to publically collect and diffuse cultural uses and thus create an experience of a green roof – square.

Landscaping terms of surface materialities such as,

– Urban terrain (groundscape)

– Planted landscapes and zones (greenscape)

– Water surfaces (waterscape)

Complement the way the landscape is developed.

Restoration of  Zahariou Cultural Centre

The restoration of an urban object, a remarkable example of Greek modernism, is approached honoring its inherent design principles and concepts. The locus dictated these design conditions as a process of topographical appropriation. It determines the meaning of the site, the desire for an open horizon, the vastness of the enclosure, the analogy of ship voyages. These concepts correspond to a vocabulary of cantilevered surfaces, open plan and architectural promenade. The design proposal dictates the completion of the building envelope as it was originally designed with minor alterations. A shallow water element is introduced in order to protect and delimitate the building as an urban object. The building is part of the whole adjacent public place, conserving the spirituality of matter but at the same time the materiality of its conceptual idea, as I. Liapis would have envisioned.