ATHENS.
The project focuses on the renovation of an optics store, dating back 40 years. The store, Centro Ottici, is a landmark of Nea Smyrni, Athens, located in a prominent site on the square by El Venizelos Avenue. At the heart of customer demand lays the radical renovation and overall design of a new, recognizable business brand identity. The main challenge we faced was the volume of information assembled in a confined space of about 50sqm a multitude of distinct infrastructure elements, counters with glasses, benches, drawers, furniture, lightning, and visible air conditioning systems, paired with a large amount of heterogeneous exhibits, all contributed to a loaded environment, which was both tiring for the visitor and failed to showcase the product. The product, in turn, included a wide range of different types, materials and color pallets. The basic idea behind their composition was to remove all infrastructure elements to the greatest extent possible and reimagine the product itself as a structural element, whose repetition would produce architectural space.
The existing structure was deconstructed to its components, and the resulting eight vertical and horizontal surfaces were grouped into four pairs of surfaces, composed by different materials and serving clearly distinct operations, all of which create a resolved, easily identifiable and functional space. 
Photos: Mold Architects.
