The Ellinikon Metropolitan Park and Coastal Front
- Award Year: 2022
- Award Category: Analysis and Planning
- Award Designation: President's Award of Excellence
- Client: LAMDA Development S.A.
- Location: Athens, Greece
The decommissioning of the original Athens International Airport in 2001 led to two decades of work to create a funding and governance mechanism that would transform the city’s largest piece of obsolete infrastructure into Europe’s largest coastal park.
The 600 acre site illustrates the layered history of Athenian landscapes including prehistoric coastal settlements, productive agricultural fields, an encampment for refugees, a 20th century airport, and a 21st century Olympic venue–and always used as an inclusive, publicly accessible space.
Most contemporary Athenians no longer have a home in the countryside, displacing a historic cultural relationship with nature. Similarly, the majority of open spaces in Athens today are either passive landscapes adjacent to ancient ruins or hyper-urban plazas and streetscapes.
Currently the largest urban redevelopment in Europe, Ellinikon alleviates development pressure away from the historic core, The Metropolitan Park is the centerpiece of a new mixed-use district, while the Coastal Front is the largest public beach within Athens city limits.
The Ellinikon site is centered in a biodiversity hotspot. Foundational plant species were selected to create associations between locally found insect, bird, and mammal species, and provide multiple ecological benefits including habitat structure and food provisioning throughout the year.
Restoration strategies included exclusive use of native and adapted species, in-situ tree preservation, reuse of removed trees as landscape features, planting in groups for accelerated succession, saving the successional seed bank, and biomass management for fire protection.
70% of the park is designed as a demonstration of Greek landscape restoration, utilizing natural areas management techniques. The remaining 30% is focused around high human contact areas and is strategically subdivided into zones that require monthly or weekly care.
31,287 trees representing 86 species were selected for their ecosystem services and adaptability to alkaline soils. Sourced entirely within Greece, an accelerated succession approach was borne from necessity but also increases biodiversity and establishes a regenerative landscape strategy.
With over 3.3 million plants, the scale of the park presents challenges with procurement. The design team collaborated with local nurseries to create native seed mixes and a native palette that established a new standard for the industry.
Material vernaculars were studied and prioritized based on local sourcing criteria. Marble and natural stone from Greek quarries and aluminum from Greek manufacturers highlight local production, while runway concrete and asphalt is reused or recycled to reduce embodied carbon.
With an abundance of leftover materials from the site’s past lives, what would typically be discarded was repurposed and even celebrated. The Saarinen terminal is adaptively reused, light poles are relocated and repainted, and concrete is mined from the tarmac.
28,720 square meters of concrete from existing runways is reused playfully throughout the park to subtly tell the story of the site’s past. With its glimmering marble aggregate and no rebar, what was once underground and unseen is honored.
One of only three airports in the world designed by Eero Saarinen, the terminal building is the centerpiece of a grand event space that terraces down from the building towards the sea, emphasizing the former grandeur of the architecture.
Water scarcity in Greece is a significant concern, requiring strategies to enhance water management and conservation. 68% of the water demand is fulfilled through re-treated water stored in a 33,607m2 lake repurposed from the former canoe/kayak Olympic venue.
Using the Carbon Conscience tool, design decisions were based on increasing sequestered and stored carbon and reducing embodied carbon. Material selections centering on mined concrete from the runways and an appropriate planting palette enables the park to reach carbon neutrality.
The Ellinikon is heroic in scale and ambition, which translates into a responsibility to reinforce the Greek relationship with landscape and reignite this ethos in a 21st century context, centering ecological restoration, carbon neutrality, and equitable access for all Athenians.