Greek edition

The upper and “the lower Parthenon” at night…  (photo by the author, 28 Oct.2007)

This most questionable box that attempts to stimulate  the “ideal”, just two hundred meters away from the original, is to be found at the end of a questionable functional procession of display and an assembly of  spatial experiences in Vertigo and Vortex ; and  all this, under a well covered long-range agenda  of intellectual perversion and architectural “murder”; because it is perverse to display arrogance and violence against the world heritage and it is murderous to deceive and set the stage for the destruction of another’s culture…

This vortexes, puzzles and vertigo Starchitectural “symphony”, starts with "A boxing game"  : The ancient ruins and the new building are obviously at war, immediately upon entering the museum precinct from the Makriyanni street entry. The new building crashes with its volume and leaves no room to the ancient finds to “breath”. In the struggle, the asphyxiating “old” devours the “new”, while the two, sweat in torture !

There is lack of proportion and equilibrium; everything is cramped by the north-eastern corner of the new building (Ventilation of the Metro, ancient remains, honeycomb concrete wall, flying corner of glass cage box on the top floor). It is an aesthetics of the outdoors in “crashing and war”, making  visually and experientially unacceptable the access to the new Museum from the Makriyanni street , causing an environmental psychological atmosphere of depression, particularly vivid in winter months. The absence of sun and the disproportionate (and illegal) building height, make a canyon-like dark and potentially dangerous entry from this side (wet marbles and moisture on glass windows of the floor). The only relief in all this  , are the copies of two Caryatides by the Byzantine red conchs of the entrance to the Weiler building to the right.  In their clumsy naiveté, they are the only reminders the visitor is in Greece.. 

The “boxing game” sequence of  crashing and violence

A hint of Vortex is first encountered under the canopy just before the main building entrance; Here we have a design assembly, of shapeless origin and the undo exhibitionism of gargantuan structural elements; a questionably dynamic gigantic gesture in  opposition to a pitiful adjacent interior; Because the triangular “baklava-like” entry hall space  just behind the entry  glass  is  miserably “small”, uncomfortable, filled with columns.  The dynamics of the architectural elements here , the shape of the space in relationship to the density of columns, the interior perspective and the overall form of the plan, lead you elsewhere(the tendency is to move to the left), and there is need of “graphics” on the floor to lead you to the circulation  proper. 

“You enter here”…and enrty  hall experience

The yellow toes on the floor, eventually lead to the main interior “up-hill” axis , which is bracketed by the two longitudinal cores of the building; It is a spatial condition  of “gothic origin”(color proportions and textures) of Vertigo and Vortex. A glass floor grid,  from one wall to the other, supported by structural grid below  and large cylindrical round columns are the real culprits. The glass plates, appearing particularly “thin” in comparison  to the supporting beams below and the exceedingly strong round columns that disappear in the tartarean chaos below, causes unprecedented feelings of spatial discomfort and vertigo,  particularly at the beginning of the uphill procession. 

   
“Vertigo-track”axis of Gothic origin ,“Tartarean chaos”and “shark-denture”zigzag wall with its exterior view