Benoît Marcou

Constellation

Located in the centre of Athens, the New Stoa integrates the existing cultural constellation of the Technopolis, a cluster composed of repurposed industrial buildings. It performs in similar ways at urban and architectural scale, by multiplying centers and focusing on the relations unifying the centers or keeping them apart. Referencing the modern Athenian stoa, it favors transversal flows and creates relational networks instead of linear connexions. 

The building itself is organized around multiple centers / outdoor rooms / courtyards / sky frames, impluvium… Flexible grounds for fertile informal discussions and potential temporary events.

They organize the circulation throughout the building and allow for static moments within in-between climates. Around them radiate other activities for making things, making speech, and showing what has been made. This « debate infrastructure » considers the act of debating as equally important as the act of cooking or building a chair. Collective or individual, it is a cultural production, an act of making.

These actions coexist between two surfaces. The first one is an artificial floor that expands horizontally and creates a continuous circulation between the rooms. The second one is the roofscape, a giant shading device sheltering all these activities. It appears as a folded sheet of terracotta, made of thousands of tiles, crafted using the excavated soil of the site. This process directly relates to the way ceramic craftsmen used to use locally sourced materials in Kerameikos during the Antiquity.

The building seeks to create the same relations it is built with. It is about assembling parts, and the repetition of individual small elements allows for the building to gradually grow and horizontally expand. This elasticity of the architectural form relates directly to the industrial typologies found in the Technopolis which show how the economy of means and the generosity of space can be key to create resilient structures.