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The Laurel Leaf Garland

Studio
Back to Works

The Laurel Leaf Garland

Status
Ongoing
Year
2024
Location
Athens

In contrast to our recent renovation of the three-story monument by Ziller (Monument Hotel), this project, across the same square in Psiri neighborhood, has a different agenda: The two houses on Agiou Dimitriou Street feature a listed façade and can be extended upwards. Apart from the expected stepped section of the addition (result of the sky exposure plane), the main question was what will be the character of the new facade, visible from the adjacent square of Agios Dimitrios church. How it will stand out as new and at the same time maintain some connection with the lower part. Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch allude to this search for the “unique yet familiar.” In terms of similarity, the role of proportions remained for us important: that the new openings would be oblong, vertical, like the neoclassical ones immediately bellow. In their rhythmic repetition, there was no point in aligning new and old openings -the windows in the two adjoined neoclassical buildings of the base had their own rhythms and due to the setbacks of the extension, any alignment would never be perceived.

 

For the inspiration from the listed façade, we focused on its details. Indeed, something unique has initially escaped our attention: a garland of laurel leaves was repeated three times above its windows. Initially when we singled out this decorative element as a starting point to form a new facade texture, we did not realize the quiet coexistence of this small detail within architecture. But then, gradually, we began to recognize it in other places as well: carved on a marble lintel on Prassa Street or in a plaster version of it, on the axis of a façade on Patision Street, opposite the Polytechnic University. These had become simplified, flat versions of the laurel band which used to decorative primarily semicircular mouldings: the torus at the base of a column as applied to Trajan’s column or the extensive golden mouldings on the frames of the vaults designed by the architect E. M. Barry in National Gallery in London.

 

 

In our renovation, the bay leaf garland is enlarged and expanded to emulate a surface with a fish-scale structure: the new facades are to be formed of semicircular ceramic tiles, similar to those used by architect Eli Modiano on the excellent roof (a Mansart type with minimal deviation from the vertical, interrupted only by circular skylights) of the old customs offices in the port of Thessaloniki. The decorative detail of the listed building and the scaly “armor” of the new facade partake into a new dialogue, the latter in the tones of the light-colored terracotta, forming a kind of new vertical “roof” where the only actual slope is to be witnessed in the lintels themselves: they meet the parapet at an angle, emphasizing the vertical proportions of the openings and bring the thickness of the wall to a sharp edge.

 

 

In the internal layout of the hotel, we kept the impressive wooden staircase that connects the ground floor to the first floor. And we even created an identical one in the same place for the descent to the basement. A new vertical staircase and elevator core is placed at the rear of the building to serve all levels. We also maintained a skylight in the separating wall so that the hall to the rooms retains natural light on each level.

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