[para]morphosis

Students: Efstathiou Thalia, Letymbiotis Konstantinos
Tutors: Vergopoulos Stavros, Gourdoukis Dimitris
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture
Presentation date: June 2011

Paramorphosis is a design project of an urban square and 20-story building that serves the needs of a Business Center. The building houses 5 different programmatic components: a city hotel, offices, recreation, retail and parking.

Ideal insolation during the hole year according to every use needs becomes central aim of the project. The means to accomplish this approach is the use of algorithmic practices. The program is divided in a 5x5x3.5 cube system and through a stochastic search procedure, is distributed around the central core of the building in order to achieve ideal insolation and connectivity between the program parts. The building‘s structural system is developed through a deformation of the 3d-grid that emerged from the stochastic search process, using voronoi diagrams tessellation. The edges of the voronoi cells become the building's main skeleton that, through a horizontal system, is linked to the main core. A flexible system of capsules rests on this structure, in which the building's areas are organized. E.T.F.E. pillows are used for the outer skin of the building as a solar shading system.

The square is designed at a lower level from the street as a continuum of the building, with all the needed green spaces and walking paths. A point of access to the underground parking place is situated at the southwest side of the square.