The city of Athens is preparing for a groundbreaking addition to its already historic city. Thanks to the efforts of Lamda Development, the city will welcome Ellinikon Metropolitan Park, set to not only be the largest park in Athens but also "Europe's largest coastal park."

Urban Land's Bennett Voyles reports that "after 3,400 years, Athens will soon get its first big park [...] When completed in 2030, Ellinikon Metropolitan Park will be 600 acres (243 ha), about three-fourths the size of New York City’s Central Park, an enormous addition of public green space that may prove as important to Athenians as Central Park is to New Yorkers."

Spearheaded by international planning and design firm Sasaki Associates, the site acts as another unique factor to the development, with areas of the new park being "leftover remnants" of venues from the 2002 Summer Olympics and Athen's old International Airport, which closed its doors in 2001.

The park's chief landscape architect, Michal Grove of Sasaki Associates, shared with Urban Land that the site "presented us with challenges that we really read as opportunities [...] "We really wanted to have this restoration ecology approach that would both maximize the benefits of carbon sequestration in the living biomass and the soil carbon of the site, but also renew the regional diversity by having an urban forest, a more intact landscape where we could have large areas that are specifically for biodiversity and wildlife, with very little human impact."

The firm's aim is to not only provide a new public park for the city but also assist in the site's ecological restoration while leaving a minimal carbon footprint on the park. Sasaki Associates explains that their team will be utilizing existing materials found on site and prioritize the use of "durable, reusable, and long life-cycle materials" that were leftover from the site's "past lives."

The team expands on its standards for executing carbon neutrality within 35 years by explaining its use of Carbon Conscience and Pathfinder tools. Sharing that "design decisions were based on increasing sequestered and stored carbon and reducing embodied carbon. With this in mind, 28,720 m2 (309,140 sq. ft.) of concrete from the existing airport runways and tarmac is reused playfully throughout the park to subtly tell the story of the site’s past, transforming the banal into something beautiful."

Groves adds, "Every single Greek or Greek American I’ve spoken to . . . [has] strong memories of the site and are all very excited to know that it’s going to be a public park." The park's design team will include members from Sasaki Associates in addition to 50 consultants and design specialists like Fluidity Design Consultants. 

This year, the Ellinikon Metropolitan Park project was recently honored at the 2023 World Architecture Festival in the Carbon, Climate & Energy category and received the Urban Design category winner in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards. The first phase of the park's development is set to be completed by 2026, with the second phase completed by 2030.