AKROLITHOS

This project involves the building expansion of the offices of a mining and rock processing company, as well as the full configuration of the interior structure of its product showroom. The total area of the project covers 3,000 sq.m. and its construction took place from 2020 to 2023. The architectural composition has relied on the reinterpretation of the spatial experience of the Company's quarries through the feeling of hovering at the intercept of the rocky terrain and the absolute sense of freedom while touring across the landscape. 

Hovering is achieved through the interpenetration of the intermediate level bridge at the junction of the two curved spatial surfaces, made of metal elements on which the exhibits are placed. The ambience of quarries becomes an experience with visitors walking along a space filled with plants, rocks and alternations of spatial perception, through a system of multiple multi-sensory experiences. 

The process of transition starts at the entrance, goes inside the landscape route of the ground space and extends to the composition of the museum area of the quarries, culminating on the first floor of the showroom. This route becomes more meaningful when connected to the entrance to the office spaces at the intermediate level. Special sections have been designed inside the showroom for displaying the museum exhibits from the quarry, along with seating areas, entertainment and gathering spaces, the piano area and an underground cellar. The logic of ground engravings continues within the office spaces, where 40 workstations are located. Floor engravings are made of curved lanes of black granite, slate and carpet. The office space deploys on 3 levels, each of which accesses the central patio through a sculpted core of vertically moving folded iron sheets.

Ascending is effected through a metal spiral staircase, which connects the three levels, whereas its transition is described as an experience of spatial change between levels. The architectural composition is complemented by boulders from the Company's quarries, defining specific routes along the space. The large-scale boulders have been processed in such a way as to denote the form of a natural rock, thereby referring both conceptually and spatially to the experience of actually passing through a quarry site, manifested by the processing of small details in objects, such as “rocky” sins, metal blinds made of slate and landscape scales. The composition is refined through processing the multiple surfaces of the showroom as a unique spatial condition where materials are placed as a narrative of an experiential feeling, thus constituting a fragmentary signification of the visitors’ walking experience, giving birth to multiple references and meanings, conceptually linked to the roughness of the matter and the tactile condition of architecture in general.