AGGEMAR building is the headquarters of one of the biggest private ship owners in the world, Yiannis Agelikousis. Architect of the project is Rena Sakellaridou.
Aggemar Building is one of the first buildings in Greece to have a curved surface, a “fluid” form that requires three dimensional design to construct the outer shell. It’s interesting that international bibliography refers to this new “trend” in iconic architecture as “parametric”.
I was invited to this project by the contractor “Intrakat” and the subcontractor “Ieronimakis Inox” that had undertaken the task to construct and position a 200 tons, stainless steel metal substructure, upon which the marble shell of the building was going to hang. The marble subcontractor was independent (out of Intrakat’s responsibility), directly chosen by the client. Moreover he was well ahead in the project with more than half of the marbles cut and waiting for positioning on a frame that wasn’t even designed in 3d. The marbles were 14.000 pieces, 80% of them different in shape, curved by a 5-axis cnc machine. The frame was given to the civil engineer of the project (K. Polychronopoulos) to design and he was in the process of it when i was called in to design in 3d, to produce shop drawings for construction. The topographers (AKSM team) and the stainless steel factory (Ieronimakis) were both involved in the construction of the main auditorium of the Renzo Piano Opera and i was the obvious ingredient missing from the Aggemar Headquarters project.
Yet, instead of using one 3d model for construction of the “parametric” outer shell, as i did in the opera main auditorium, the task was divided in subcontractors and engineers. Moreover there was an urgency regarding the timetable of the stainless steel factory, that had to do what the others did in some years time, in just few months. I was hired by Ieronimakis to do the job of providing the 3d model between, in situ, reinforced concrete frame and cut 3d marbles, also almost ready and waiting. We were lucky enough that the marbles were designed in Autocad 3d by the marble company Smili (3d designer for Smili: D. Papadeas) and were compatible with my preferable parametric software, Solidworks. In collaboration with the topographers team we decided to 3d scan all the necessary beton edges, in order for me to have, a model with the marbles and the reinforced concrete in place, in order to add, in 3d and absolute accuracy, the stainless steel frame designed in 2d by Mr. Polychronopoulos team and his exceptional collaborator P. Papadeas.
It needed more than a year of full commitment to define in space, the engineer’s team concept for the frame. There was really a big effort for the 3d model to be able to provide work for the factory in real time. The result was a mammoth complex construction consisting of 81.000 stainless steel solid bodies and 14.000 marble solid bodies.