National Gallery Athens Museum by Parmenidis Longuepee Mari Team is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 Golden A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design Competition Category.
GoldInterior· 2022
National Gallery Athens Museum
by Parmenidis Longuepee Mari Team
Client: National Gallery of Greece
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Interior Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #129529The Design
About National Gallery Athens Museum
In the 1960's modern building of the National Gallery in Athens, the exhibition rooms are designed like a promenade in open space. The interior is designed as a sequence of wooden lined transitional areas for information, and of white exhibition rooms with specially designed suspended ceilings for each exhibition function. Controlling the directions of gaze, the depth of view in the rooms and towards the city, the general lighting in relevance with the exterior light, and subduing the materials and the technical details to highlight the works of art, the space gives an affect of free choice.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
National Gallery Athens Museum is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. National Gallery Athens Museum is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. National Gallery Athens Museum creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.
Where to Get It
Museum and Exhibition Space Design Services
We specialize in creating transformative museum and gallery spaces that balance visitor flow, artwork presentation, and architectural harmony. With over 50 exhibition projects completed, our team brings deep expertise in museography, lighting design, and spatial coordination.
Request QuoteInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to controlling visitor gaze and movement patterns within the National Gallery Athens Museum creates a unique sense of free choice - could you elaborate on how this design philosophy evolved during the project development?
The control of visitor gaze and movement patterns as design philosophy had evolved from the very beginning of the project. The exhibition panels in the middle of the space were placed facing the incoming visitor, and at the same time we let the gaze pass between them, allowing the perception of the entire exhibition hall to its end. Thus, there were no mandatory movements but an invitation to stroll. Also, these exhibition panels were placed in the middle of thematic areas, like islands, and they were always in different relationships with each other, creating perceptual differences in spatial and viewing conditions during the walk, keeping the interest in what would follow. In these free paths through spatial differences, the building's openings overlooking the city were another element that guided the desire to go on.
The National Gallery Athens Museum masterfully balances the preservation of historical art with modern architectural elements - what inspired your decision to use wooden transitional areas contrasting with white exhibition spaces?
The control of visitor gaze and movement patterns as design philosophy had evolved from the very beginning of the project. The exhibition panels in the middle of the space were placed facing the incoming visitor, and at the same time we let the gaze pass between them, allowing the perception of the entire exhibition hall to its end. Thus, there were no mandatory movements but an invitation to stroll. Also, these exhibition panels were placed in the middle of thematic areas, like islands, and they were always in different relationships with each other, creating perceptual differences in spatial and viewing conditions during the walk, keeping the interest in what would follow. In these free paths through spatial differences, the building's openings overlooking the city were another element that guided the desire to go on.
The lighting design in the National Gallery Athens Museum appears to create a dialogue between interior exhibitions and city views - how did you develop this intricate relationship between natural and artificial illumination?
From the beginning of the lighting design, the final result took into account the external light. On the one hand, there were films on the windows to control the amount of external light and, on the other hand, there were different scenarios for uniformly increasing or decreasing the intensity of the technical light depending on the time of day in different seasons. Also, in particularly sensitive areas affected by external light, there were translucent blinds, which were lowered and raised by a photocell depending on the intensity of the light. To all these lighting relationships, we can add the almost invisible sources of direct light. By hiding the light sources, we hide the cause of the lighting, and the space as well as the works of art seem to be self-illuminated.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Interior design, museography of the accessible spaces of the visitors:
Permanent exhibition areas, with large exhibition panels and suspended ceilings function as lighting mechanisms. Areas for alternating exhibitions, with suspended ceilings to support panels, lighting, projectors. Entrance area and circulation junctions covered with wooden panels for orientation and division of space.
Excerpts from the city are visible in a two-way relationship between the work of art and the city. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Total area accessible of the visitors 8.500 sm, distributed over 6 floors.
- Tags
- museography, interior space, gaze, minimalism
- Production Technology
- The materials in the exhibition and entrance areas are mainly metallic frames covered with panels of gypsum or wood, for the walls, or with Stretched Ceiling translucent diffusor films. The materials are subdued to highlight the works of art: wood without strong veins, matte marble on the floor, grey coloured exhibition walls.
- Design Challenge
- The hardest part was the coordination of the large number of the constructors and engineers of the building and the museography, of the supervisors of the Ministry of Culture (as we are talking about the National Gallery), of the curators and conservators of the Gallery, of the consultants of the sponsors.
- Research
- Our team has a long experience of over 50 similar studies and constructions, on art exhibitions. In the specific project, we combined the given structure of the building with the museology study of the National Gallery and with the free flow of the visitor of the exhibition, checking the results through the navigation in detailed 3d maquettes.
- Inspiration
- The design of a permanent and alternating exhibition of the Greek art of 19-20th c., with material and geometric spatial indexes for the gaze that give the sense of free choice to the movement of the visitors (panels facing the incoming visitor permitting the maximum depth of the field of view), in a continuous open-air feeling due to the general indirect lighting that follows the incoming view of the excerpts of the city. Minimalism and materials that are subdued to highlight the works of art.
- Project Duration
- The study of the project started in 2017 and finished in 2020 in Athens. The construction started in 2020 and finished in 2021.
- Operation Flow
- The visitor can have information general or specific for the art works in each exhibition room, or for the projects of the museum, or for the orientation in the building by 60 interactive screens placed in the entrance and the circulation knots.
- Team Members
- architect: George Parmenidis
architect: Christine Longuepee
architect: Ifigenia Mari - Image Credits
- All photos own to the team.
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