描述

2016, Athens, Greece.
The redevelopment of a semi-abandoned site, the former home of the racecourse, which finds its natural connection with the rest of the city and the sea. A National Library to house some 750,000 volumes, an Opera House and a large public park in the area of Falero, the ancient port of Athens. A project that grows out of the topography: the hill is raised to accommodate the buildings and make space for greenery. In this way a park of 166,000 square meters is born, with 30,500 trees and 35,000 shrubs. Adventures on the building site: construction of a one-hectare canopy in ferrocement.

The Renzo Piano Foundation issued its eighth monograph in 2016.

The fascinating story begins with an encounter between two people, Renzo Piano and Andreas Dracopoulos, director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. They immediately shared the vision and objectives of the project, making the focus of the design process “education, culture, sustainability and environmental balance,” the values that the Stavros Foundation wanted to fulfil. The project sought to embody the Greek maxim kalos kai agathos, the  beautiful is also the good, an ideal that, by uniting ethics and aesthetics, embraced Greek cultural values in a timely undertaking.

The Greek landscape, its flora and its light are essential components of the project, recounted, like the other volumes in the series, through the voices of the protagonists.