Conversion of Two Old Warehouses into an Architectural Office.
"When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you—your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics [...] and one by one, if you're really painting, they walk out. And at the end, if you're really painting, you walk out too."
Philip Guston
The conversion of two abandoned, elongated warehouses into an architectural office presented a complex reuse challenge. The central design pursuit was to imprint our team's synthetic methodology into the new spatial organization of the building's shell. The core idea underpinning this reuse can be analyzed in the composition of the section and the organization of the plan.
The architectural office's section is structured across three distinct levels: the ground floor, designated for meetings and dialogues; the basement, housing the model workshop and materials library; and the loft, dedicated to digital design.
At the lowest level (-3.00m), a unified, underground, and mystical space accommodates a materials library and a model workshop, where architectural models, construction detail prototypes, and material and texture palettes are fabricated and composed. At the upper level (+2.60m), a mezzanine space with diffused natural light and transparency is created. A central work table is proposed at its center, accommodating the workstations of the design team.
The two aforementioned levels, which host different stages of the design process, converge at the ground level, which houses the central meeting and dialogue space. Models, sketches, diagrams, and material palettes are placed on the elongated table in the center of the space or are displayed on the level's bulletin board, fueling daily discussions on project development and design proposals.
An inclined wooden tiered seating area connects the ground floor to the upper level, unifying the two spaces and allowing for transparency and participation in the discussions taking place at the central table. The lateral boundaries of the tiered seating organize the circulation with the side movements towards the basement space on one side and the auxiliary support functions on the other (reading area, kitchen, bathroom, storage).
The wooden tiered seating is centrally positioned within the unified space, and its two narrow sides are open to light through slender metal windows. The studio space opens towards the city on the west side
while it faces the building courtyards on the east side. In this way, the office creation space incorporates a relationship with the city and the reality it contains, with the curated facade of the Athenian "polykatoikia" (apartment building) on one side and the "neglected" rear facade with haphazard pipes and air conditioning units on the other.
The two longitudinal walls of the existing shell define and participate in the space as a field for creation and exploration. One boundary reflects a relationship with the past: a unified library made of metal and wood houses the books that have shaped us, artworks, models of previous projects, and archival material from completed works. Together, they form for us a constant that slowly develops and evolves with us. The opposite wall, facing it, refers to the present.
A large bulletin board displays representative material from current projects, sketches, ideas, references, poems, and obsessions that fuel the daily synthetic process. It is a dynamic boundary that changes constantly, reflecting daily discussions, concerns, and creations.
Between the contrasting urban views of Athens and the varying cadences of the design and creation process, our Athens-based studio is organized—a space for creation, dialogue, restlessness, doubt, and ideas—a vessel of life.
