Athens College Arts Building

  • Year: 2021
  • Location: Athens, Greece
  • Size: 2.770 m2

This competition entry deals with the design of an Arts building that includes various student workshops and an art gallery inside the Athens College Campus. The design of this proposal departs from the question posed through the building program on the co-existence of the Public-Gallery space and the Private- Educational space. The resolution of this tension comes through abstraction rather than typology, by taking cues from Barnett Newman’s expressionist work, that deals with the quest of the sublime and the ambiguity of the “in between” space.

The program is split with a monumental gesture of two concrete walls penetrating the building volume and anchoring it one the site. Simultaneously, a multi-level ramp that meanders around the different functions becomes the central circulation artery, binding the scheme into a coherent and functional ensemble. The identity of this proposal lies at the juxtaposition of the connector and the separator -the Ramp and the Walls-.

On the other side, as a piece of technology, this building has embedded within its design, a carefully considered environmental strategy that interweaves seamlessly with its tectonic resolution. The use of heavy materials with big thermal mass like concrete and stone, allows for a passive design that is tailored to the unique dry and hot climate of Athens, reducing its energy demand and rendering it resilient towards climate change. More importantly though, it yields a building that can withstand the test of time with minimal maintenance, which in effect is the most important aspect of sustainable and low carbon design.