Putting our pieces together

Piraeus Tower facade remaking

competition 

Kostas Manolidis, 2010

 

The Piraeus Tower's condition is an outcome of dysfanctional state. This absurdity could be seen as a symbol of Greece itself and the wreck that the country is recently encountering. The Tower is indeed an early monument of today's crisis. Therefore, its renovation could also represent something bigger.

Revitalizing this derelict building could be an uplifting enterprise. As if our collective self starts to put itself together. Reactivating its deepest cultural resources. Welding the pieces of its disrupted psyche. Such an aggregation of old parts into a new whole generates this proposal. 

The new life of the Tower is warmed by familiar architectural elements: thick walls, rows of windows, colonnades. In the same way that old building fragments used to be stacked for erecting a new wall. These relics sacrifice their individual significance and work collectively towards a new dynamic coexistence.