Halkida Center

The area of Chalkida forms a unique and ideal site for designing a modern complex of shopping and leisure activities because it combines its superb natural beauty with an easy accessibility to the Attica region and the city of Athens. Halkidas’ infrastructure in retail and entertainment, at present, cannot fulfill the needs of its inhabitants and its many visitors. These needs come to complete the construction of the new Halkida Shopping Center. The plot is designed in a private location, two kilometers from the city of Chalkida. It involves a scheme covering the whole area of the site on one level and is placed by the sea overlooking the South Evvoikos Gulf. With an easy access from all directions, it is placed in the middle of the three major municipalities of the Evvia region. OFFICETWENTYFIVEARCHITECTS decided to locate the buildings in the scheme following a strict tracing of axes and considering parameters such as accessibility of the visitors, orientation and the magnificent view to the gulf. The objective is to design a busy complex that impels its users to visit it again and again, creating a friendly and lively environment that will become eventually a landmark for the local community. Forms follow the function as the volumes derive mainly from their uses, producing a structure covering merely shopping activities as well as generating social events. The latest movement in mall design, worldwide, favors space arrangement in accordance with their use and function. Thus, in Chalkida Shopping Center, the architects decided to create two major poles to categorize the schemes utilities. The first pole accumulates commercial uses, with small and medium sized retail shops (50-150m2) as well as two hyper markets (above 1000m2). The other one, mainly destined for leisure activities contains a bowling center, cinemas, restaurants and café-bars. Located carefully at the sites’ best views to the north Evvoikos gulf it is designed in such way to practically force visitors to pass through the retail area. Generally, the visitors’ movement from and towards some sections of the shopping center allows them to pass through various departments avoiding as a result dead zones with low commercial activity. Locating the various components of the structure was an essential task for the architects involved in the design, especially when some of them exceeded 100 meters of length and 9 meters at height. This was accompliced by using modern, light materials as well as by the continuous succession of open and enclosed spaces and the lightsome volumes.