Piraeus Tower 2010. Exhibition in Athens

Following: 

Introduction, backround.

Exhibition opening in Athens.

8 Exhibition Opening Videos (Greetings, Speeches, awards, interviews)

Exhibition Opening Photographs gallery 1  gallery 2

«Conclusion». By Alexios Vandoros

 

Introduction

Architects, civil engineers, students, mechanical engineers, designers, artists and profesionals from various other specialties took part in the open architectural ideas contest, which was organised by GreekArchitects.gr and DuPont, for a fictional facade of the Piraeus Tower.

The initiative of our architectural ideas competitions is the localization of urban issues at vital points of Greek cities and the attempt to resolve them through Architecture, presenting to the citizens and State the real proportion of Architecture in the real urban space.

For all the above, a Tall Building at the port of Piraeus that is abandoned for more than 30 years was located. It is a 22-storey building, 84 m. tall and it is known as "Piraeus Tower". The only tower of the area is "sleeping" in one of the bigger ports of the Mediterranean that presents a dynamic growth at the last decades.

The main issue of the competition is not the completion of another high rise building, whose completion is pending for years. The problematic exceeds the narrow limits of the dialectic regarding the construction or not of high rise buildings and skyscrapers in Greek cities and particularly in Athens.

The competition is focused only at the reconstruction of the external façade of the building in order to set off a synectic and clear position regarding the conversation of the Tower with the Piraeus urban landscape and how this new "facade" takes part in and partially forms the relation between the Port, as an important entrance and exit point of the capital, and the urban complex of Athens.

The objective pursued through the competition Piraeus Tower 2010: Changing the face. Façades reformation is to include the building in the urban landscape through the design proposal and to highlight it as the landmark for the wider area.

"The members of the Jury committee, GreekArchitects.gr and DuPont, wish to sincerely thank all those who participated in our competition. The number of participations exceeded every initial expectation, as 380 proposals were ultimately submitted, by 949 studiers from 44 countries. The fact that many participants actually visited the Piraeus Tower in order to gather more details and information about the building, as well as the inclusion of the competition in the academic curriculums of international technical universities, demonstrates how the Tower of Piraeus evolved from an ideas' competition to a research and study field project".

After the completion of the evaluation process, which highlighted the distinctive proposals, we are launching our web exhibition that shows the prizes, the mentions and all the submitted proposals of the competition.

We have also published a printed catalogue with texts and the 380 submitted proposlas of the competition.

 

Exhibition Opening in Athens

The Exhibition Opening was realised on 24th of June 2010, in Athens, at the multi-space Athinais, and a crowd of people attended embracing the efforts of our e-magasine.

Among the attendees, that were more that 700, almost all the distinguished candidates from Greece and abroad participated in the process while significant personalities of the architectural community, such as the architect Ioannis Vikelas, one of the original designers of Piraeus Tower, honored us with their presence. 

 

 

The exhibition durated from 24th until 27th of June 2010, while it is considered to "travel" to other cities in Greece.

Vassilis Mistriotis, architect and editorial director greeted the exhibition. Speeches' curator was the architect and chief editor of GRA Alexios Vandoros . The architect Maria Papadimitriou commended the mentions and the leading speaker of the ceremony was Manolis Anastasakis, organisation Head of the competition. The architects Sandra Kalliagra, member of the organisational committee, and Giorgos Vlachodimos, responsible for the catalogue design, and many friends and colleagues that support us daily attended the ceremony.

 

 

Interesting speeches followed by:

Anastasakis Manolis

Citerne Anne-Line

Kalogirou Nicos

Kotionis Zisis

Tompazis Alexandros

Tripodakis Alexandros

Stasinopoulos Thanos

and are presented on the videos below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

«Conclusion». By Alexios Vandoros

 

By the exhibition and the press conference at 'Athinais' in 24 June 2010  the second international architectural competition of ideas of the e-magazine GreekArchitects.gr (GRA) is completed successfully.

The number of entries, the dissemination of consultants worldwide and the high level of proposals prove that this effort of GRA was even more welcomed than the previous competition of Dionisiou Aeropagitou.

The architectural competitions of ideas of GRA arise from the identification of urban problems in vital points of Greek cities and from effort for resolving them through the Architecture showing in the citizens and reminding in the State that Architecture is a means in order the urban environment problems to be handled.

The architectural competitions of ideas want to cover the gap that has been created by the deflation of the architectural competitions in Greece the latest years, that are almost vanished mostly by the public sectors that use the depressive Ν3316/05 which is the trojan horse for the indirect assignment of the projects to the large domestic architectural offices.

The first award of the previous competition was delivered altruistically and unselfishly in the Ministry of Culture so that it will be developed but unfortunately it was ignored. In this competition the householder of Tower, the Municipality of Piraeus, was participated as supporter. Thus, it has been more possible for the result of the competition to be implemented. I used past tense because during the first press conference when the competition was announced, the representative of the municipality of Piraeus was spreading abroad this probability of implementation and the will of Municipality to exploit at last this enormous heritage or at least to complete externally the building so that the access in the bigger port of Greece will not be accompanied by the aspect of a 80-metres ruin. However, he failed to fulfil his minimum obligations as supporter, such as the publication of book or the hospitality of the exhibition in Piraeus and as soon as the cameras left, he was disappeared, revealing one more time the pathogenicity of local authority and the scorn of its public fortune.

By completing the second online competition, a short and not yet mature assessment of this new type of architectural competitions introduced by GRA is deemed necessary. The essential innovation lies in the process of evaluation of proposals from the jury. The whole process is held online: every member of the jury votes alone via the computer and the results of each stage result from the resultant of the independent votes of the members. In both these competitions the jury is composed by a big number of members (15 and 11) who are Greek and international, professionally or academically established, architects (at the majority). In this way the existence of a big number of opinions and judgments was ensured that may offer as much more different points of view as possible, fulfilling therefore all the questions asked by the organisational committee.

Innate problem of architectural competitions is their objectivity as far as the results are concerned, revealing the complexity of architectural creation and its esthetic evaluation. The use of model for independent judgments without any meeting or discussion between the members of the jury was characterized as a reality show or a statistical evaluation. Nevertheless, such a meeting is not prohibited in any case in personal level. In the competition of Piraeus Tower in particular a special locked blog was created by the organisational committee for the opinion exchange which was not used.

Let's not forget that many of the buildings that we admire nowadays worldwide have come out of international architectural competitions in which members of the judging committee were architects with strong personalities, who dared to promote innovative and daring ideas which were probably inapplicable at that time. This competition by GreekArchitects sets off that kind of pioneering architectural ideas, that maybe look inapplicable at first sight but perhaps they are the near future of architectural creativity.

I personally believe that the whole competition process will be evaluated in the future in connection with the total process of judgment introduced by GRA, and it can be used with reliability in all architectural competitions of ideas. On the other hand, it may not be so successful in competitions regarding buildings or entries that presuppose more complex criteria of evaluation or at least a common meeting at the final phase of the judgment may be necessary. I hope that the next competition of GRA will be on such an entry so that we can draw a conclusion.

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As chief editor of GreekArchitects and member of the organizing committee I would like to thank:

- the members of the judging committee for their passionate cooperation at this complex task

- the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic School of Chania and the CTBUH (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) for their support

- the sponsors of the competition for their contribution and their long support that help us remain an independent and honest private group, having the unique goal to promote architecture, make it familiar to the public and educate them, without any commitments and financing from the State.

- the DUPONT company, without its initiative and contribution this competition would have probably never become a reality, that has invested in a tough economic period to Architecture and Greece, that is internationally blamed.

- the members of the organizing committee, Manolis Anastasakis, Sandra Kalliagra, Simos Gerasimidis, and especially Maria Papadimitriou for their everyday effort in this extremely demanding task

- Sandra Kalliagra, Maria Papadimitirou and Manolis Economou for their help in setting up the exhibition.

- George Vlachodimos for the catalogue design, which is a laborious and important effort for the printed record of the competition and is available for purchase

And my friend and publisher of GRA Vasilis Mistriotis, who proves again that GreekArchitects is not another commercial act but a democratic and honest interference in Architecture.

 

Alexios Vandoros,

Editor in Chief of GreekArchitects.gr

 

See the prizes and the mentions HERE

See the 69 proposals of the 2nd Phase HERE (flip .doc)

See All the submitted proposals (380) of the competition HERE (flip .doc)

Exhibition's Catalogue presenting all the proposals of the competition HERE

Further information on competition's website (proclamation, downloads, etc) HERE

Exhibition Opening in Athens. Speeches (videos & photos) HERE

Workshop HERE

 

Supporters

            

 

Grand Sponsor:

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