Thessaloniki ConFex Park

Location: Thessaloniki, Greece

Description: Masterplan/Leisure/ Cultural/ Mixed use & retail /Workplace

Category: Mixed-use

Scale: Large

Size: 96.000sqm

Design Period: 2021

Collaborators: Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Grant Associates (landscape design), Atelier One (structural design), Atelier Ten (MEP design)

In 2020 Eleni Pavlidou was selected together with Wilkinson Eyre Architects among 15 international teams to participate in a design competition for the redevelopment of the TIF Helexpo Exhibition Centre in the centre of Thessaloniki. The goal of the International Architectural Design Competition, was to design a cutting edge and environmentally friendly Exhibition and Conference Center of the highest standards, in combination with an urban green park to be used by the citizens of Thessaloniki.

The team’s main concept was to extend the public park in the heart of the Exhibition and Conference Centre, to ensure that this is an open, engaging public space at all times and not an Exhibition Centre that the public can occasionally access forming a barrier in the fabric of the city. The team took inspiration from the old City grid pattern and sought to

re-imagine it in the design, combined with the main ‘nodes’ of the proposal. The park was pulled over the roof of the central Exhibition Hall 2 creating new vistas towards the sea and the Old City walls and then pulled down again in the heart of the Exhibition Centre. In addition it was also proposed to extend the landscape to the South of the site to connect the Museum of Modern Art and the new Conference Centre with the Archaeological museum, creating a new, cultural quarter.

The footprints of the central Exhibition Halls, 1 and 2 and the Business Centre were modelled around a central water oculus, forming a sequence of radius facades that promoted a fluid and permeable space. The ConfEx Park was split into 2 main levels. An upper landscape level connecting all the main Site entrances to the key buildings and spaces and a lower landscape level connecting the bottom doors of the main halls and the Conference Centre. This lower level is both a service level on a ‘non-event’ day and a public space on ‘event’ day, providing covered links between all main spaces. It was not formed as an undercroft but as an extension to the landscape above. This level shares the outside concourse space of the arena, giving this

venue a new and vibrant and connected landscape plaza. The diagram allowed the Park to be completely permeable or, on an event day, for ConFex elements to be securely managed without the requirement for perimeter fencing.

Exhibition Halls

The proposal provides a variety of volumes and adjacencies across the Exhibition Halls that deliver an optimum mix/possible permeations of spaces for events

We have placed the smaller, 6 metre high spaces at the lower level. This means the bigger, 9 metre high halls are column free and can be serviced directly from the perimeter roads, and accessible from the main pedestrian landscape realm.

The footprints of the main halls have been modelled to create curved facades that to open up the landscape and create a fluid movement between the main spaces, while opening up vistas between the key buildings.

The halls are a combination of double height spaces and two storey spaces. They are a mix of unit sizes to ensure a wide range of possible offers.

Hall 2 is the ‘buried’ hall at the centre of the Park. This has a dramatic concrete roof structure and is a clear, single span space – the premium hall in the Park.

All halls seek to maximise potential for daylight into the spaces if required by the operator.

Conference Centre

The Conference Centre is a fluid space, flowing with the landscape and the

movement across the park. The main auditorium is place son the Upper level. It is a fan-shaped flat floor column free Hall that can be easily subdivided into smaller rooms and with the use of spiral lift technology it can be reconfigures into a traditional raked floor auditorium.

The luxury exhibition hall is placed at the lower level and gives a clear, open through-route from the Arena to the Archaelogical Museum at the south of the Park.

Business Centre

The Business Centre is conceived as a series of volumes arranged around a central courtyard that frames the views to the ConfEx Park from the new Metro Station.

The Multi Purpose Hall is accessible directly from the main ConFex plaza or from the hotel lobby. It shares the same architectural language as the Exhibition Halls. The hotel spans this opening, a dramatic block that faces towards the sea. The Multi-purpose hall is connected to the hotel lobby, providing direct links to the hotel and its functions. The office blocks sit

over double storey retail units that frame the courtyard. These are flexible spaces that can be simply subdivided into smaller tenancies.

Landcsape

The new park will not only complete a missing piece of the puzzle connecting this area to the wider green infrastructure of the city but it will become a destination in its own right, a delight for the locals but also for regional and international visitors.

The proposed landscape feeds on the natural qualities of the site; the traces of the past, the urban grain embedded in the old planning of the city, the Mediterranean sun, the waves hitting the coast, the blue sky, the sounds of the sea. All the elements; material and ethereal configuring our perception of the site. The landscape in essence will be: the rays of the sun filtering through the Pine Trees while you walk through the sinuous sky-walks, the lush Subtropical Gardens with mist while you walk across the park in a break from an exhibition or escaping the hassles of the city, the flowering orange trees… the landscape of senses. We will reinterpret these ‘common’ elements as a mosaic, re ingraining the park with the city, creating memorable moments and exciting design solutions; delivering a sophisticated planting palette and the sensation of walking around a landscape well apart from conventionalism.

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