The project of re-NEW-ing the former Olympic Palace Hotel, a fixture on Filellinon Street, was all about establishing the right Brazilian-Greek connection. Leaving behind their traditional medium, the object, and venturing into the large scale, the Campana brothers put together a Workshop, involving Greek postgraduate students of architecture and design from the University of Thessaly. Chosen on the basis of their interest in green design and the latest recycling practices, the students injected more than a breath of fresh air.
Found objects and manual skills were combined with advanced technologies to create a NEW concept of space. Through this prism and the Campanas’ creative method of restoring, recycling and sharing, the re-design of NEW Hotel offers, in the end, novel interpretations and hybrid approaches to the use of pre-existing spaces. Items of furniture and objects of the modernist hotel, designed in 1958 by innovative Greek architect Iason Rizos, became works of art, as local materials and culture were reinterpreted and remixed.
In this creative process, everything became NEW. The re-configuration of hotel rooms, reception halls and restaurant areas was accompanied, at a different level, by a re-working of traditional and recurring themes of popular Greek culture: the Karagiozis shadow puppet, beads against the evil eye, and postcards from the 50’s to the 80’s. Nothing remained unturned. Chairs kept in storage were reprocessed, while favela constructions were made out of fragments of abandoned pieces of furniture, found in the hotel or collected from the street. Quirky bespoke furniture and handmade fixtures took pride of place in rooms and public facilities. A founding piece in the whole process was, in fact, the construction of life-size models, in collaboration with specialized craftsmen, cabinetmakers and artisans.