In 1973, the heir to the Greek billionaire ship owner Aristotle Socrates Onassis dies in a plane crash. Hopes for the continuation of the business are dying, but not the memory of his son Alexander. To perpetuate it, the father bequeathed half of his property to the opening of a foundation named after his son Alexander S. Onassis.
The foundation appeared in 1975, and in December 2010, the Athenians saw the results of the work of the Parisian workshop Architecture-Studio. On an area of 18,000 m² there is a multi-storey building of the cultural center of Onassis, decorated with white marble, traditional for Greek architecture, as well as glass and sheet gold. The building, surrounded from the outside by an elegant metal lattice, acquired its originality and successfully blended into the panorama of the city.
The cultural center has two auditoriums, an exhibition space, a bar and a restaurant. The hall of the main stage can accommodate about 900 people, in the hall of the upper stage - just over two hundred. 700 m² is dedicated to several exhibition areas with permanent and temporary exhibitions. The main value of the Center is that it is universal: it can host theater performances, music concerts, gala receptions, and scientific conferences.
The president of the center looks at the post-crisis situation with optimism: “Despite all the challenges that modernity is sending us and which we cannot predict, we must remember that we live in Greece. This country is rich in culture. And we are convinced that art and education are not a luxury, but one of the basic needs of a modern person."
The idea of creating and using a space in which different scientific and cultural areas (such as medicine, literature, religion, history, art, etc.) would organically coexist, echoes the ideas of the Hellenistic period, characterized by the active development of all areas of Greek culture.
The Parthenon, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Arch of Hadrian and the new Cultural Center of Onassis - all these Athenian structures contain the history of one state. The mission of the new cultural center is to preserve old knowledge and accumulate new ones.
Comprehending modernity is exactly the same painstaking work. However, at the moment, the "modern" is still only entertainment in nature: in the bar of the cultural center, visitors are surprised by the installation of LEDs, shaped like a ship and reminiscent of the initiator of this large-scale project.
