This Amazing Piece of Athens Architecture Is Worth Adding to the Itinerary
An arts hub in the Greek capital proves modern buildings can sit in ancient settings, says Australian architect Jefa Greenaway.
I saw the centre on my first family trip to Europe with my wife, Catherine, in 2019. She’s also an architect and Greece is the birthplace of my parents-in-law. While we were there, I met up with another friend who’s an architect and we were really surprised by this project in the heart of Athens. It’s an amazing piece of architecture by one of the world’s pre-eminent architects, Renzo Piano.
It houses the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera. Piano designed the SNFCC with local firm Betaplan. They started in 2008 and it wasn’t completed until 2016 so it had a massive duration in terms of realising the project. The site was the former parking lot of the 2004 Olympic Games and it’s only about four kilometres to the centre of Athens.
It’s surprising and quite striking in contrast to the city of Athens, where you’re enveloped in ancient history. The building has a skillion roof, with an expansive 170,000-square-metre Mediterranean landscape on top of it, where olive trees and native grasses were planted to encourage bird life and so on. The SNFCC was designed as an artificial hill or high point and has a viewing deck that gives a 360-degree outlook of the port and the city.
There are strong sustainability initiatives embedded in the project. It has 10,000 square metres of photovoltaic cells on the canopy roof, which power the whole precinct. That integrated approach to architecture blurs the boundaries between landscape and built form, with a sustainability agenda that’s part of the project’s DNA. It’s inspiring in that regard.
The whole project was funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. The Center was named in honour of Greek shipping magnate and philanthropist Stavros Niarchos, who was a fierce rival of Aristotle Onassis. By virtue of being funded through the foundation, the materials used are very luxe and high-end so you have excellent design quality. The foundation gave the complex to the Greek state in 2017.
Wailwan and Kamilaroi man Jefa Greenaway has championed Indigenousled design for more than 25 years. The trailblazing architect established his holistic design practice in 1998 and is a senior lecturer at The University of Melbourne.
