Piraeus Tower Athens | Greece

The skyline of the Piraeus harbour reveals an accumulation of dissimilar objects. Like a landmark, the Piraeus Tower with its new facade concept shall have a federating role, creating its own distinctive profile within the heterogenous cluster of the urban collage. It has to represent a soothing element and to stabilize, to connect and to highlight the single parts within the whole patchwork, which forms the city. Eliminating the craning parts of the horizontal body forming the first and the second floor of the current tower outline, our concept evidences an intrinsic composition of three clear building volumes: the tower, its contrasting black „child“ and the canopied walkway between the two independent building parts, leading to the lateral entrances. The tower and its black opponent are extended by one floor to regain the demolished floor space. To dynamize their silhouette additionally, a volume - covering the supplemental staircase - is placed on the tower‘s rooftop housing two signal antennas for air-traffic security. A new external envelope forms a second skin and dissolves the classic typology of a high-rise building into an iconic seamless piece, transforming it into a loggia tower. Large scaled glass-fronted cubes mark the tower like giant footsteps ascending the sky and insert multi-layered, intimate green zones. These cubes remeasure the harbour skyline and absorb the critic urban heights of the surrounding building lines. The external shell incorporates the additional staircase as well as, on every floor, walking and recreational spaces between the cement structure and its transparent enclosure, offering a direct link with the surrounding city, the harbour and the sea. The structure is massive but open, restrained but bright. All together, the building volumes and the loggias express the composite, multipurpose aspect of a living urban programme, meant to create life. michelangelo acciaro © michelangelo acciaro | architetti