Ioanna Vlachaki

Publishing and exhibition space renovation for VOID and Carnivora , Athens, 2021.

A metal object with a size of a huge furniture or a small building, placed between the columns of the building that it resides in. We explore the past condition of the interior space by opening a hole that used to exist as a secondary access to the basement. We design a galvanized volume, around these holes, which is devoured by passages and uses, which reflects itself, the objects that stand on it and the bodies that surround it. This volume welcomes the work of publishing, the promotion and production of books as well as the sharing of the knowledge that surrounds them.

The work comes as a reply to the brief for the creation of a new space for the publications VOID & Carnivora that is going to contain a workshop area, an office, storage as well as enable the movement of a large volume of books to the basement. The composition of the work is centered around the two holes that connect the basement with the ground floor, the one hole occupied by a vertically moving platform for transferring books and the other by a staircase that leads to the basement. A large structure around these holes serves all the necessary utilities of the offices and the workshop, with recesses and voids in order to provide passages and surfaces for working and exhibiting. Most of the structure’s volume is accessible and contains storage spaces.

The structure is separated in three programmatic zones that are intercepted by corridors which lead to the holes inside it. The first zone is the facade of the work in which the structure is developed in a staggered form with large steps and affords the highlighting of books and other items towards the street. The second zone contains worktops, surfaces for exhibiting books and materials as well as storage spaces. The third zone contains storage spaces and recesses that contain all the mechanical equipment and the raw materials of the workshop.

We worked with a basic architectural gesture, that of creating a large volume in the center of the interior surrounding the holes of the basement, which consolidates all the spatial needs, leaving the perimeter movement open and neutralizing the rest of the interior. We worked sculpturally and ended up with an irregular shape that assists movements and functions as well as creates the necessary and desirable tensions and spatial relations. The volume is cased with galvanized sheet metal, a common construction material that through its multiplication displays the required hand craftiness embedded in the process of its placement during construction and highlights the uniqueness of the objects that inhabit it.