Intervention at the City Plaza Hotel
This is an enlargement project for the hotel City Plaza, an ocuppied hotel that works as a refugee center in downtown Athens.The purpose of the course was to double the volume of the hotel.
This project does not intervene in directly in the actual building, since it intervenes from the thinking of the organizers themselves that the hotel perfectly meets all the needs of the organization. From this point, the project acts directly in the patio of the city block, a kind of abandoned garden.
It is aimmed to achieve two main objectives: The reactivation of the city block, which currently has a lot of abandoned buildings and business premises, and to give refugees a small, protected natural environment. The projects acts in the block and the hotel in 3 different parts:
- The central patio: A rehabilitation of the already existing natural space which also adds flexible spaces for refugees
- The abandoned building and the empty plot: Where 2 metallic structures with modules thataim to give the organization a flexible space, for both ultra-temporary accommodation or mixed uses.
- The abandoned business premises, where both, new accommodation spaces and a big open indoor space are created.
The project can be considered more as an intention than as an intervention. The intention to preserve a wild natural space inside the city, creating a spontaneous garden and turning it into a private object of public enjoyment: the comunity takes over the patio and the patio takes over the community, the architecture is just a link between the natural spaces; The intention to give the organization a cheep and simple, but yet effective and useful spaces made of simple materials that alow the comunity of the City Plaza to repair, buld or deconstruct their own facilities; The intention to destroy the actual rigidity of the actual hotel by creating flexible spaces that have no fixed uses, to show that it is possible to make decent basic accomodation for refugees that also are capable of harboring other uses, to make a space that gives a voice and visibility to refugees without sensationalism or voyeurism. This is a human message.
This project does not intervene in directly in the actual building, since it intervenes from the thinking of the organizers themselves that the hotel perfectly meets all the needs of the organization. From this point, the project acts directly in the patio of the city block, a kind of abandoned garden.
It is aimmed to achieve two main objectives: The reactivation of the city block, which currently has a lot of abandoned buildings and business premises, and to give refugees a small, protected natural environment. The projects acts in the block and the hotel in 3 different parts:
- The central patio: A rehabilitation of the already existing natural space which also adds flexible spaces for refugees
- The abandoned building and the empty plot: Where 2 metallic structures with modules thataim to give the organization a flexible space, for both ultra-temporary accommodation or mixed uses.
- The abandoned business premises, where both, new accommodation spaces and a big open indoor space are created.
The project can be considered more as an intention than as an intervention. The intention to preserve a wild natural space inside the city, creating a spontaneous garden and turning it into a private object of public enjoyment: the comunity takes over the patio and the patio takes over the community, the architecture is just a link between the natural spaces; The intention to give the organization a cheep and simple, but yet effective and useful spaces made of simple materials that alow the comunity of the City Plaza to repair, buld or deconstruct their own facilities; The intention to destroy the actual rigidity of the actual hotel by creating flexible spaces that have no fixed uses, to show that it is possible to make decent basic accomodation for refugees that also are capable of harboring other uses, to make a space that gives a voice and visibility to refugees without sensationalism or voyeurism. This is a human message.
- 00 - Description
- 01 - Location
- 02 - Aconometric
- 03 - General plan
- 04 - Lower plan
- 05 - Upper plan
- 06 - Image
- 07 - General section
- 08 - Plans type 1
- 09 - Plans type 2
- 10 - Plans type 3