Design and Construction by ahylo studio
Design team: Pavlos Xanthopoulos, Grammatiki Zamani, Alkistis Papadantonaki
Location: Athens, Exarchia | Greece
Client: Greek Evangelical Church
Year: 2013
Photographs: Ioulietta Zindrou | Courtesy of ahylo studio

The initial idea was to create a space that would welcome people of many different backgrounds. Make them feel comfortable and welcome in an unknown environment. The multifunctional building consists of a church, a library, exhibition space, a small kitchen – caffe, office spaces and a guest room. The building is an old refurbished 2 store building aged since the early 1900s. Our goal was to use primitive materials like the 4000 wooden oak pieces that assemble the cross symbol or the metal pipes that form the library, without extra finishings in order to focus on the materiality. The wooden pieces of the cross temple were not sorted in order to keep the imperfection of each piece visible on the final result. In our approach there are no defective pieces for the cross symbol in the same way that each person has his own personality  and we all worth the respect of one another.