Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens

Renzo Piano Building Workshop

text: Maria MĂNESCU

"What I really do in life is sailing."
(Renzo Piano)

Site perspective

Renzo Piano's newest cultural complex - the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center of Athens - is a building that integrates under one roof two defining components of the cultural life of a great city: the National Library and the National Opera.

The building is located in Kallithea, 4 km south of the center of Athens, and makes use of a former parking lot, reminiscent of the 2004 Athens Olympics, which until recently was also used for illegal car races.

Although occupying a sizable 170,000 square meters, the cultural complex is discreetly integrated into the urban fabric surrounding Kallithea, one of the oldest harbors in Faliro Bay, attempting to reconnect the land with the city and the sea.
The sheer elegance of the construction is striking. The concept is based on partially burying the building into an artificial hill that takes up the slope of the land sloping down to the harbor (the southern end of the site) and interposing a large gently sloping park, landscaped à la française, between the city and the building.

The dominant feature of the composition and of the site as a whole, visible from all angles, equally present from a distance and up close, is undoubtedly the 100 x 100 m flat, very thin, glossy white roof, 100 x 100 m, which simply hovers over the ensemble, offering spectacular views of the sea.

As well as providing shade for visitors, which is essential in this strongly sunny location, the roof has been provided