The Ellinikon Experience Park by doxiadis+

In 1995, the Greek State relocated Athens Airport to a greenfield site east of the city. After years of planning, a public-private partnership was formed to transform the site into 3,000,000 m² of real estate, 2,000,000 m² of public spaces, and the Athens Metropolitan Park – at 2,000,000 m², one of the largest in the Mediterranean. doxiadis+ has been part of the development team since 2012, handling many landscape aspects.

As a precursor to the full-scale park, LAMDA Development initiated a pilot in 2020: the Experience Park, located on land with cultural protection status due to WWII and Cold War military infrastructure. The pilot had two aims: to test technical, design, and administrative strategies before scaling up, and to offer Athenians a public park years ahead of the larger development.

doxiadis+ won the design through a competitive tender. The challenges were significant: to create an attractive park within an ongoing construction site; to test environmental, aesthetic, and social approaches; to retain the old airport’s infrastructural character and convince the developer and authorities to do this in a playful manner; to engage Mediterranean users, who tend to prefer active social spaces, while also trialing sustainability strategies never before attempted in Greece, and to deliver design in just six months.

The completed Experience Park spans 75,000 m². Organized around four “squares” and four “green areas,” it serves as the entrance to the larger Metropolitan Park and offers dense and immersive experiences in nature, play, and social interaction. Balancing nature with architectural materials, the park exemplifies innovation, environmental care, and design quality.

At its core is the principle of Forming Symbiosis – a design approach that unites opposites: human-made structures with natural systems, recycled materials with luxury finishes, environmental resilience with sensual appeal. The aim is to restore natural systems, reinforce cultural identity, promote wellbeing through engagement with nature and seasons, and enhance community through inclusive social spaces.

A series of design goals guide the project:

Designing for Society: Inspired by John Rawls’ theory of Deliberative Democracy, that it is physical social spaces which bring different citizen groups together to form societies, the park focuses on children – an underrepresented group in Athens’ public spaces – as primary users. Their presence attracts families, creating a multigenerational, self-sustaining user base.

Seating and Play: Drawing from Jan Gehl, seating areas are designed to support socialization. These include zones around the Playground, Water Plaza, Plaza A seating “nests,” and the esplanade. The Water Plaza, built atop a former hangar base, and the Playground, set among mature eucalyptus trees and themed around nature and aviation, are key attractors.

Sustainability: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The park preserves as much of the old airport as possible. Concrete slabs are cut into blocks that highlight the warn patina on some faces and the beautiful terrazzo patterns of the marble aggregate on others, or broken and reworked by stonemasons; broken asphalt is repurposed. These materials appear throughout the park as paving, seating, and art, redefining waste as beauty and serving as visible lessons in sustainability.
Living systems are equally respected. Soil is retained and enriched. Many trees are transplanted from other airport areas. Native plants are seeded, often using flora from Mount Hymettus, to establish a water-wise ecosystem connecting to the surrounding Attic landscape.

Ethics and Resilience: Landscape architects must advocate for all forms of life. The Park is structured around ecotopes, with the health of plants and animals central, serving as a living lab for these strategies.

Water Cycle: The site has a salinated water table due to past practices. To reverse this, the park tests rain gardens to reduce runoff and recharge aquifers. Native planting minimizes irrigation needs. Future irrigation will rely on treated wastewater.

Microclimate and Climate Change: The old airport is an urban heat island due to extensive unshaded asphalt and concrete. Hardscape has been reduced, tree cover increased, and asphalt rotovated to expose aggregates, improving albedo, lowering heat retention, and connecting visually with the other materials.

Changing Mentalities: Most importantly, the park is an educational tool and a model for the future. Through visible, joyful, and engaging design, it experiments, teaches, and inspires, introducing visitors to sustainability, social connection, physical activity, and symbiotic living with nature.

The Experience Park sets a new standard for public space in Greece, where sustainability, cultural memory, and innovation are fully integrated. With over 2,000,000 visits to date, it is not only beloved and active, but also the first newly built project in Europe to achieve SITES Gold certification.

• Other credits:
Structural and MEP: Deta Consulting Engineers
Lighting: Foss and doxiadis+
SITES Sustainability: doxiadis+
Water Maze: doxiadis+ and Fontana Fountains
Playground: doxiadis+ and Kompan Greece
Gym Equipment: My equilibria / Elite areas
FF&E: Escofet, doxiadis+
Landscape Contractor: ECON21
General Contractor: REDEX
PMC: Hill International
Client: Lamda Development

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