SECOND MATTER
The unseen inner core of an urban block
Stefania Orfanidou, Gregory Petropoulos, Eleni Ragavani
Location: Gerani, Athens, Greece
Workshop: Urban Geology
Supervisors: Costis Paniyiris, Evelyn Gavrilou
Year: March 2017
Postgraduate Program: INSTEAD IV
University of Thessaly, Department of Architecture
In the heart of Athens, at the old neighborhood of Gerani, the high density of the urban blocks transmits a suffocating feeling. The compact structures, behind their facade, hide meticulously a large amount of unused or half-abandoned places.
Our case study is focused on the urban block between the streets Gerani, Sofokleous, Sokratous and Anaxagora. The intervention lies on the perception of maintaining the outer shell, the skin of the urban block intact and introducing a “cloak” in the interior open space of the block by creating a common ground for all. The clean cut of the inner core in an offset of 15 meters from the edges, leaves the buildings raw and naked, exposed to a new circulation zone that is attached to their open sections. The cloak, that reaches the height of 15 meters, encapsulates the interior gaps that are created by the cut, as well as the transverse stoas that function as the main entrance from the street to the interior from the ground level. In addition, two thin “towers” are settled opposite from each other, in order to fill the gaps of the outer shell. Their height reaches the 26 meters, as an open dialogue with the nearby high-rise buildings.
Our goal is to maintain the commercial spaces of the ground level, according to the character of the neighborhood, but at the same time to stimulate the use of the upper floors as a mix of residential and working spaces. The new circulation zone will work as an intermediary space, an internal stoa, where the in-between borders are reconsidered. The new atrium will transform the unseen interior of the block to a new meeting point, a public, yet half-hidden, territory.
