The Steam Power Plant (SPP) of Neo Faliro, is the first power station in Greece and was launched in Athens in 1903. Located in the coastal zone Kifissos River the boundary between Neo Faliro and Muscat. After the final closure in 1972, most of the complex was characterized as an industrial monument, including its equipment in 1986. Just recently certified full discharge of the industrial complex of asbestos, again giving the opportunity for rehabilitation and reuse. The position of SPP New Faliro contributing metropolitan transport networks, combined with the available vacant land located right at the junction of highways Piraeus, Stratigraphic makes the ideal location for a comprehensive urban planning.
The existing parameters such as the key role of the building in the history of electrification of the country, its proximity to the degraded Kifissos River, the strategic location of the study area into the urban fabric and finally the uncontonuity of the built environment surrounding the industry complex, led us to propose a Museum of Energy, inside the listed industrial shell and a series of sparked interventions in the area surrounding the plant. The latter aimed at reconnecting the power station with the current urban fabric and the upgrading of a large riparian area of the city which has been marginalized due to traffic arrangements caused by major Olympic projects. Our intervention proposes in short, the lifting of the limit, imposed by the Metro railways, and its conversion to an aboveground railway crossing, in order to achieve relief of the industrial complex of SPP towards the Piraeus Avenue and the creation of a new Metro station, given the need to link the new supralocal pole within metropolitan Athens.
Further interventions attempt to restore the contact between the city and the element of water, after being concealed by an elevated highway, while providing a core of green in a densely populated part of town. Those peripheral large urban gestures are to accompany in a both functionally and semantic way the idea of the Museum of Energy, creating a «Forum for Energy and Climate Change.» Thus, the suggested widening of Kifissos River, all along the park is being «embraced»by a newly proposed «Museum of Kifissos and Water Resources». Within the museum, a garden of water hosts the ancient temple of Cybele coupled with an exhibition on biodiversity, personified by the deity during ancient times.
Finally, mild and limited commercial activities, housed in new constructions with low energy requirements, coupled with the creation of underground parking, undertake the blending of the new park with the existing built environment and especially the old factory «Sanitas» known Today as the «School» of Irene Pappas, hosting cultural events while being already a powerful landmark in the area.
The range of parameters that lie within the region, coupled with its historical value and constantly changing form, such as a recent excavation revealing large parts of the ancient «Long Walls», create an explosive potential that the proposed study attempts to tame and also to highlight, in response to contemporary problems of urban design in Athens.