Office Building in Paiania
The plot on which the Karela office park project is being developed is located at Pousi-Ledi at the Municipality of Paiania in Attica Greece. It is adjacent to the main highway connecting the El.Venizelos International Airport to the city of Athens, on the verge of an industrial area soon to be transformed into a major office building hub.
The brief called for a three-storey office building with three underground parking floors, for a company of 1,700 in-house employees and 1,100 parking spaces. The total area of the building amounts to 650,000 sf with a surrounding landscape area of 270,000 sf.
The building designed seeks to fulfill the aforementioned quantitative requirements while providing a healthy and sustainable work environment for the company employees and visitors. We opted for unrestricted views from the offices and maximum visibility from the highway, thus turning the building into a landmark.
Due to the fragmented polygonal shape of the plot, the building was conceived as a partially open wooden meter, complying with the local legislative directives and maximising the resulting lot coverage. The resulting building volume consists of six three-storey wings and a covered atrium which doubles as the main entrance to the complex. The chosen building width of 72’- 2 ¼” lead to the deployment of naturally lit and ventilated offices along both sides of a central service zone. The entirety of the elevations is covered by ten rows of wide aluminum louvres which provide substantial solar shading as well as visual unification of the six fragmented wings. The roof of the entire complex, which is vegetated with indigenous plants in a way reminiscent of the local landscape, incorporates a running track, turning it into an immense (92,500 sf) recreational space for the employees. The same planting scheme is used at ground level, blending the complex into the surrounding landscape.
We opted for high endurance / low maintenance materials, locally produced, such as exposed concrete and anodised aluminum, in an effort to minimise the building’s energy footprint. The same concept was applied to the landscape design used throughout the project: we chose plants primarily indigenous to the Mediterranean basin which are resistant to drought and require less supplemental water.
CREDITS
Design Team: Halari Artemi, Nikopoulos Giorgos, Nicholas Paplomatas, Athanasiadou Marianna, Iliadis Giorgos, Karagiorgi Christianna, Lafazani Despina, Lizardou Marianna.
Collaborators: John Peponis
Project assistants: Tassos Ringas
Structural engineering: T. Tsiknias & Assosiates a.e.m.t.e.
MEP: Team m-h Consultant Engineers L.T.D.
Ligthing: Aristeidis Klonizakis
Landscape: Helli Pagkalou & Associates
Sustainability: Aris Tsangrassoulis, Vasilis Geros
Cost Control and Monitoring: Dimand
Other consultants: Dromos Consulting S.A.
