The Arts Building is articulated around and above one Stairway, an outdoor passage, a concentration, intensification, and an ascent within the significant network of the outdoor campus routes. An outdoor covered Stairway is its functional and symbolic center, and at the same time the dominant connecting element with the College environment. This central, outdoor Stairway – informal stepped lounge, traverses along the building, connecting the most public and communal entrance areas of the Building, with the most intimate and daily entrance of its everyday users. Connecting the public access on the level of the inner road and the main school gate, with the intimate entrance located one level higher, open to the school forest and to the student trajectories between the scattered educational buildings. The Stairway communicates visually with the main functions that are significant both to the students and the visitors, especially with the Exhibition Space. The students are in constant contact with the exhibition and curatorial events in the room, exhibitions, actions, setting up or dismantling, everything is visible. At the same time the continuous liveliness of the Stairway is the permanent background of the exhibitions, sometimes, in fact, it can become the pre-eminent exhibit.

Above the outdoor Stairway, the top floor houses and gathers, around a linear glass-covered patio, the most intimate, busy and lively indoors spaces of laboratories, teaching, offices. It is the atelier in the attic, the elevated plane that caters to, functionally and symbolically, both the isolation and the protection that contribute to inspiration, as well as the elevation, the enlightened regard that we often associate with art.

Design team:
Iro Bertaki
Christina Loukopoulou
Costis Paniyiris
Kostas Apostolidis
Fotini Adrimi, Vassilis Kalisperakis (3d visualisation)
Elli Tsakopoulou

Consultants:
Michalis Aggelidis (structural engineer)
Dimitris Mantas (mechanical engineers)
Antonis Skordilis (landscape design)
Aris Tsagrasoulis (energy and environmental planning)