Kouvdos Furniture Factory Showroom and Office Building

218 Eleftheriou Venizelou Ave (Thiseos), Kallithea, 1985

Architects
Alkis Christofellis (1946-1991)
Yannis Kouvdos (1949-)
Associate architect
Antonia Valanou-Christofelli (1945-)
Consulting architect
Anastasia E. Tzakou (1928-)



This original building was a work by Alkis Christofellis, who died tragically at the age of 45, and Yannis Kouvdos who, as students of the School of Architecture at the University in Milan, came under the fertile influence of Guido Canella. This is particularly true of Christofellis who worked in the architects’ office of Achilli-Brigidini-Canella (1970-74) and served as professor at the Milan School of Architecture from 1985 until his death.
The Kouvdos building was a radical conversion of an impersonal building in Kallithea into a furniture showroom, shop and offices for the Kouvdos company. Product of an academic and internationalist approach, the renovation of the building exceeded its utilitarian purpose and upgraded aesthetically the indifferent consumerist landscape of Thiseos Avenue.
The building, with its total area of 3572 sq.m. and width of 20 m., includes the shop-showroom that occupies the ground floor, mezzanine and basement, five floors of offices and the flat roof. It is a high quality structure. Many architectural details were designed with unusual inspiration and care, such as the false ceiling and stairs of the showroom and shop.
Perhaps the most important feature of the building is its polyphonic and theatrical façade, on which the late modern spirit of the times is harmonised with selected motifs from interwar and postwar modernism. The façade is organised almost symmetrically and is separated into four vertical sections – three wide and one narrow – by means of different materials and styles. The second from the left that includes the entrance constitutes the predominant stylistic element. It is a slightly projecting metallic structure with four vertical and six horizontal members; it flanks a wall of glass bricks set back a little from the boundary of the lot. The wall beneath the metallic structure is level with the ground floor and semi-hexagonal from the first to the fifth floors. The other large sections of the façade are two similar glass curtains subdivided by an original combination of two grids. The fourth narrow section takes the form of roofed false balconies with planters of bare concrete.

TRANSPORTATION