Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas
Event Container
The task to understand the potential of one of the most neuralgic urban settings of Frankfurt, the crossroads of commerce, urban tourism and until lately education (Goethe University), revealed the need for a program which radically reintroduces the dialogue between the urban visitor and the Frankfurt inhabitant. The concept for the program renders the notion of a catalyst function, a diversified vertical event space that hybridizes a hotel with a housing program based on the institution of condominium. The interaction between spatial configuration and program distribution has been based on strategies that derived from material studies, urban constraints evaluation, research on event space configurations and data organisation methods, altogether formulating a partly parametrically-driven system. The floors dissolve to an internal urban complexity achieved by alternating ramp spaces that unfold vertically a multiplicity of event spaces and voids that broaden the relationship between visitor and inhabitant, 'spectating' and being 'spectated'. The alternating angles of the basic program components depend on an interior/exterior view-based ranking and integrate the facade and the bracing elements into a function-related system by means of structural density and visual permeability.