New View is a lightweight temporary structure that maximizes spatial performance while minimizing material and structure. It was realized by Topotheque at the rooftop of Romantso Cultural Center in Athens Greece during May 2014 and was funded by the IKEA foundation in Switzerland.

The pavilion was designed in order to energize the abandoned terrace of the building and to become summer gathering place for the people working at the creative offices hosted in the building.

The aim was to prove that such an approach could be a viable way of efficiently realize similar temporary structures at points of significant natural and cultural beauty (vista points) in the countryside of Greece in order to provide shelter and shadow to the visitors and reframe the greek landscape, hence the name “New View”.

The objective of this project was to develop and evaluate the proposed workflow, which is informed by environmental and structural analysis as well as material and construction constraints in order to increase performance objectives while enabling geometric complexity.

The emphasis of the research at this stage is to elaborately study traditional techniques, material properties and assembly methods and explore how they can translate into design behaviors and simulations that enable emergent patterns to influence and improve the performance and energy footprint of the designed space.

The project is the outcome of research in developing generative design systems that incorporate bottom up approaches with parametric techniques for informing architectural design.

In particular a workflow was developed that incorporates structural form finding with a vernacular building technique (reciprocal frames)  through a continuous digital chain (digital fabrication). Based on the available resources (budget, material, people) the design system was quickly adapted and optimized in order to realize the pavilion in 1:1 scale within the given timeframe (3 weeks).

Facts & Credits

Design  Evangelos Pantazis, Iason Pantazis, David J. Gerber
Building Team   Evangelos Pantazis, Iason Pantazis, Anastasios Spyridonos, Constantinos Schinas, Anastasios Dedes, Victoras Gogas, Nickolas Panagiotopoulos, Petros Kostakis, Dionysis Dikefalos, Spek , Dimitrios Pappas
Diagrams   Topotheque
Photography   
George Sfakianakis
Sensors and Internet of Things setup   Dimitris Charitatos, Iraklis Kassimis, Thanassis Demiris
Sponsorship   Ikea Foundation, University of Southern California, Vodafone CU
Year    2014
Type   Pavilion


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