Coastal Design Greece: The Latest Architecture and News

Bjarke Ingels Group has revealed the design of Park Rise residences, a new development the Little Athens neighborhood of Ellinikon, featuring modern homes, greenspace, retail, office, and hospitality. The Ellinikon is an ambitious urban regeneration project that reimagines the grounds of Athens’ old international airport and transforms it into a 6.2 million-square meter smart city. Within this development, the Little Athens neighborhood aims to become an integrated part of Ellinikon’s smart urban ecosystem and bring over 1100 new residences to the northwestern coastline of the development.

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The Athens International Airport was decommissioned in 2001, leading to two decades of work for the local government to establish funding and a governance mechanism to transform the 600 acres of unused space into Europe’s largest coastal park. The site has a layered history, from prehistoric settlements to the construction of the airport in the 20^th century and the site being used for as an Olympic venue in 2004. Architecture office Sasaki is leading the design to transform the site again and create the Ellinikon Metropolitan Park, a restorative landscape and climate-positive design that will serve as a park, playground, and cultural center for the city of Athens. Developers are planning to break ground early next year.

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Open Platform for Architecture (OPA) has released designs for the latest in their series of cliffside buildings: Lux Aeterna / Holy Cross Chapel. Similar to their previous project, Casa Brutale, the chapel employs a style referred to by OPA as “Transcendental Brutalism,” and has been embedded into the side of a cliff. The front profile of the building takes the shape of a cross, to be a seen as a spiritual beacon as it is approached from the water.

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