Renzo Piano’s work stretches several countries around the world. From London’s tallest building, The Shard, to the Kimbell Art Museum Extension in Texas and The Auditorium of the Park in Italy, the architect is not short of projects spanning humongous magnitudes. His latest venture, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, located in Athens, Greece, and named after the country’s most decorated multi-billionaire and shipping mogul, is a subject of political and economic controversy. Politics, economy, and architecture are intertwined deeply; that is, it’s not possible to separate one where the other is involved. Architecture is as much a political and economic profession as it is about designing places of living.
Following Greece's recent economic difficulties, it's easy to understand why constructing a $660 million cultural center would elicit such strong emotions and place the Pritzker Prize-winning architect at the center of it. For a country that only recently had a $6 billion bailout to save it from collapsing, embarking on such a massive project at this time seemed to be the wrong priority, but is it?
We have built the cultural centre, but now it is the obligation of the state to run it. If a country can’t run a national library and an opera – the basic pillars of a nation’s culture – then we might as well lock everything up and jump into the Mediterranean. ~ Andreas Dracopoulos
The plot of land is an abandoned parking lot from the 2004 Olympics in the country's most densely populated municipality, Kallithea district. Renzo Piano was entrusted with improving the 168,000-square-meter neglected space by creating a design that connects the city to the sea. The brief was to build a park that would include a library and a theater.
Kallithea was one of the first seaports, thanks to Fuliro Bay. Despite its proximity to the sea, the site provides no views of the sea due to surrounding constructions.
To provide the views of the sea, Renzo Piano Building Workshop chose to create an artificial hill sloping southward of the sea. At its very peak, the cultural center stands magnificently with views of the sea and the city beyond. The sloping park from the building provides a park that the citizens can use for their outdoor activities.
The Agora, which serves as a foyer, connects the opera and library, which are both located in the same building. The opera wing consists of two auditoriums, one with 450 seats and one with 1,400 seats. The smaller auditorium is reserved for classic operas and ballets, and the larger one is for more experimental acts.
The concept for the library was to establish not only a resource rich of books and study materials but also a cultural center that is widely accessible to all Greek citizens. The library’s reading room is a horizontal, fully-glazed square box. The transparency allows it to provide 360-degree views of Athens and the sea to the readers. It sits atop the building underneath the canopy roof.
The architects designed the canopy roof to provide shade to the building considering the country’s very hot climate. To make it even more sensible, photovoltaic cells cover over 10,000 square meters of the roof—an amount enough to provide up to 1.5 megawatts of power for the building to reduce spending on energy. To recognize the building’s sustainability, it was the first to achieve LEED Platinum rating in the country.
The artificial hill has its own connection to water, as the building does with the sea. A new canal runs along the site from north to south, connecting the site visually and physically to water, consequentially creating a main pedestrian axis called the Esplanade.
Andreas Dracopoulos, the co-president of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, while speaking to The Guardian, said that the idea for the project was born when Greece was still flying high. That was back in 2007. Andreas disagrees with claims that it was the wrong time to put up such a huge, costly project. He believes that in tough times like this, it’s only fair to give the country hopes of a better world—constructing this civic building is that gesture.
This is a project that came at the right time and in the right country, much like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building during the Great Depression in America. When all other libraries, theaters, and museums in Greece are closing owing to the country's economic downturn, this structure will undoubtedly provide Greeks with optimism. In the future, they will look back at the center and recall the economic depression that has hit them recently. They'll smile back at the noble cause—a good reminder.
Project Information
Architect:
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Client: The Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Location:
Athens, Greece
Completed: 2015
Photography: Yiorgis Yerolymbos
