In collaboration with ARATA ISOZAKI & Associates.
Consultants: D. Fatouros, Α. Lada, L. Papadopoulos

Building M2 is an extension that completes the Cultural and Conference Centre commissioned by the Organization of Thessaloniki Concert Hall. The building encompasses the main hall accommodating 500, a conference hall seating 300 that can be divided in smaller rooms, a museum of musical instruments, a musical library, administrative spaces, a restaurant as well as underground parking facilities.

Among the key parameters that influenced the design of M2 are the plot location by the sea, the relation to the existing building, the extension of the urban fabric in a vacant waterfront plot, as well as the new building’s status in the cultural and social life of the city. 

Building M2 was treated together with the existing building M1 as a single architectural entity that consists of two strong and distinctive architectural presences. The two buildings, despite their significant difference in scale, coexist as equals in an intense contrapuntal relationship of mutual definition being perceived in the open space between them. The new building, opposite the solid, earthy, inward volume of the existing, inserts the notions of transparency, fluidity, spatial continuity. It develops connections with its immediate outdoor surroundings as well as with the natural environment and the urban city network. The glazed facade of the Foyer, a vast space which develops in three levels, opens up to the views of Mount Olympus across the sea, while after dark it transforms into an oversize screen that reveals the inner life of the building. 

The building and its immediate urban environment is organized by a composition of clear volumes and surfaces.The consecutive flat roofs of the individual volumes are accessible to the public linked via a system of staircases, so that the building may be perceived as an extension of the waterfront promenade with selected stopping points on consecutive planes, or as a rising landscape that offers interesting views of the city and the bay of Thessaloniki.