Agemar Headquarters

AGEMAR, ATHENS, GREECE
Design: 2013 – 1016
Construction: 2014 - 2018

The headquarters of the biggest Greek Maritime Group, Agemar expresses Athens’ opening to its seafront. In 2012 the client held an invited competition for the company’s new headquarters; a decision carrying deeper significance amidst the country’s economic crisis. In the five years to its completion, Agemar was, apart from the new National Opera and Library, the only large scale building to be constructed in Athens.

Agemar is placed near the waterfront, one block away from Sygrou Ave., the main artery that connects Athens city center to the sea, characterized by large scale office buildings. One block away however, the area becomes residential. Agemar occupies only part of the city block, sharing it with low-income apartment blocks, and has a 100m long front on a low traffic axis leading to the new National Opera and Library nearby. It soon became clear that the scale of the building, so much in contrast to the neighboring apartment blocks, needed to be meditated.

The first ideas were about a trip in the sea. The proximity to the sea and the maritime nature of the client were coupled with the architect’s personal experience: a sea voyage is about a horizon and a direction. ‘The trip in the sea’ became Agemar’s story.

This is a building that talks about the horizon and the opening to the sea. Horizontality and directionality were joined in a fluid geometry that generated the flexible non-finite form. The long horizontal lines of a ‘floating in the sea’ fluid form that expands or contracts, adapts to the urban scale and differentiates the building from its surroundings, create a strong corporate image in the city scape and set up a dialogue with the intense natural light of the Athenian sky. In a ‘thick wall’ strategy, they transform the external view to a ‘movie-strip’. An ellipsoidal atrium gives spatial intelligibility and generates a play of light and shadows.

Programme: Agemar houses 30616sqm in two buildings that unite underground. Building A, the Headquarters, houses entrance foyer, company museum and library, open plan offices on five floors, executive floor and roof-garden. Building B, the Crew, has amphitheater and restaurant, offices on three floors and roof garden. Furthermore there are four underground levels with company gym, swimming pool and bridge and engine simulators on the 1st, and a 330 cars parking on the other 3.

Materiality: The decision to differentiate the upper part from the base guided materiality: white marble cladding, CNC-cut with stainless steel substructure in the upper part of Building A, a vertical garden for Building B; a GRC prefabricated claustra and grey sanded marble for the base. Light grey fair-faced concrete exposed elements; anodized aluminum structural curtain wall systems for fenestration, with high performance flat or curved glass. Green terraces with local plants and a fiberglass / metal structure canopy on the 7th floor. Reflecting pools and generous ‘subtractions’, that bring natural light to the gym / pool and the simulators, mediate the building’s relation to the ground.

White marble curved walls and grey marble floors, anodized aluminum and sound absorbing ceilings for lobbies; white perforated aluminum ceilings and knitted vinyl for floor and walls in the offices; walnut wood for the library and the executive area. A white marble sculptural wall separates the owners’ office from the boardroom. Steel-reinforced concrete structure and pre-stressed beams or metal suspension columns to support the large cantilevers.

Agemar is a LEED Platinum building and a Mies van der Rohe Prize nominee.

Illustration