The Façade as Urban Space – Art and Architecture
For nearly two hundred years, Piraeus Street has been one of Athens' most important arteries for work, industry, and everyday life.
Text: Knut Werner Lindeberg Alsén
Along this axis, the city's development can be traced through buildings that have changed function without losing their connection to the past. A clear example is the building at Pireos Street 166.
Here, Athinon Arena was constructed in 2004 as a large concert and entertainment venue, before being transformed in 2014 into Pantheon Theater—a multifunctional cultural space for theatre, music, and cross-disciplinary artistic expression.
Brief History – Pireos Street 166
The building at Pireos Street 166 was completed in 2004 as Athinon Arena, a large concert and entertainment venue designed for mass audiences. The arena quickly became a key site for popular music and major stage productions in Athens.
In 2014, the building was transformed into Pantheon Theater, with the ambition of becoming a multifunctional cultural space for theatre, musicals, and cross-disciplinary artistic events.
After 2017, the building was again used intermittently as a concert venue. Since 2024, cultural activities have ceased, and the building is planned to be redeveloped for new commercial uses.
Costas Varotsos
The architectural transformation of the building at Pireos Street 166 is inseparably linked to the artistic practice of Costas Varotsos, one of Greece's most prominent contemporary artists. Varotsos is known for monumental works in glass, metal, and industrial materials, in which art consistently engages in direct dialogue with its surroundings—both the natural landscape and the urban environment.
Born in Athens in 1955 and educated in Italy in both art and architecture, Varotsos has developed a practice that persistently seeks an osmotic relationship between artwork, architecture, and place. For him, art is not an autonomous object, but an active component of the space it inhabits. This principle also forms the foundation of his work at Pireos Street 166.
In this project, architectural and sculptural processes evolved in parallel. Varotsos treated the building's façade as a living skin rather than a static outer wall. Through the stone surface, large glass spheres emerge—forms that may be associated with celestial bodies, cells, or pulsating organisms. Integrated into the building's structure and illuminated by optical fibers, the spheres emit an inner light whose expression shifts with the time of day and the rhythm of the city.
The result is a building that appears organic and dynamic, almost as if it were breathing. The façade conveys an inner rhythm to the surrounding urban space and functions as a visual translation of the cultural life unfolding within the building. Art thus becomes a mediator between the building's internal functions and the public realm.
This intervention is further reinforced by a light, transparent glass canopy that marks the entrance. The canopy serves both as an architectural transition and as an extension of Varotsos' formal language, where light, reflection, and transparency play a central role. The entrance becomes not merely a functional element, but a clear signal of the building's open and inviting character.
Varotsos' work at Pireos Street 166 can be seen in relation to his other public works, including The Runner (Dromeas) in Athens. Common to these projects is the desire to integrate art into the city's living rhythm and make it part of everyday experience rather than an isolated monument.
At Pireos Street 166, art is not an addition to architecture but an integral part of the building's identity. The façade functions as an interface between past and present, between industrial history and contemporary culture, and between the building and the city. In this way, the history of Athinon Arena and Pantheon Theater demonstrates how Pireos Street has continually been redefined—and how a single building can contain multiple layers of a city's collective memory.
