THE ARK - Proposal for Arxellence 2 competition Thessaloniki business center

A brief look at the city showed us that this is a traditional city with a fairly flat skyline and a high level of coherence. At the big scale this analysis led us to propose a singular tall symbol rather than a skyline loaded with many buildings. In our vision, the new tower is  a pendant of the old White Tower and has the role of refreshing the image that the city once had with its vertical symbol that has now been surpassed by the built environment which is in continuous development.

At local scale, given the difficulty of the site, due to the irregular shape and heritage buildings, the core of the concept, was to find an ordering element to harmonize the space, which is the module.

Our proposal is sculpted by the elements found in the context and synthesized through an analysis. The final volume is the result of some intentions to counteract some negative effects that the environment may have on comfort ( such as water proximity and climatical matters) and other gestures come to meet the qualities of the site such as cardinal orientation accesibilities and historic buildings.

THE ARK as the name stated, is a project with the main focus on protection and gathering, without being crowded. The enclosures we propsed can be seen as rings. Each of them having a historic building in configuration, which they protects and values like a gem.

Around the middle of the site, marked by the axis of slaughterhouse, for which we proposed a cultural function, we felt the need for an open space like an urban plaza. This leisure space is proposed to be covered with a lightweight structure membrane that can offer protection against the sun rays which is also used to capture rainwater.

The tower is a very different piece of structure which comes to complement the entropy already present in the site due to different types of structures present here and it is also the only element seen from distance.