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The land with a two-storied listed panels house built at the beginning of the 20th century, is situated in the center of Athens, in the area of Ambelopkipoi, between the Athens Tower and Hippocrateion Hospital. It is a building plot whose main façade overlooks a small square and its back a 6m wide street.
The design proposed, keeps a portion of the listed building’s façade over a depth of 6 meters and adds at the back a 6-storied, structurally independent, office building.
The main idea was to add a “faceless” building that would not “compete” with the listed building, a discreet backdrop. Following the area’s constant urban style, hanging glass panels were used as building material for the front face. The aluminum profiles are not visible so as to create a single reflective surface which, depending on the angle of vision, through the successive reflections of surrounding buildings and the sky, dematerializes and projects the neoclassical building’s façade.
A large portion of the building’s south-oriented back surface has been covered with beaten “California” marble and the remaining part with reflective glass panels. Between them strips have been placed, which support the exterior sun-shades, made of stainless hollow beams with intermediate sandblasted horizontal glass slats.
The surrounding space follows the geometry and direction of the old garden in which the compulsory electrical power substation was integrated. The surface of the exterior space is paved with white marble in alternating horizontal smoothed and beaten strips.
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