Christou Lada Street 1-3, Athènes, Grèce

ΛΑΔΑ 3, the name of the project, corresponds to its address, 3 Christou Lada Street in the so-called "business triangle" of Athens, a dense maze of narrow streets and alleys. Most of the buildings are up to 10 stories high and the narrow streets act like canyons, preventing views and severely limiting access to daylight.
The architects emphasize durable quality and respect the local heritage. The goal is to create healthy, comfortable, and sustainable spaces by using low-tech, easy-to-maintain solutions to achieve the best possible impact in terms of energy savings and environmental quality.
An initially three-story building constructed in the 1930s received additional floors in the 1950s and late 1970s and had been vacant since 2017.
For the total of nine upper floors of the ΛΑΔΑ 3, open-plan offices are foreseen on six floors, complemented by a landscaped lobby with café and lounge on the first floor, a small auditorium, meeting rooms on the mezzanine, and a multipurpose room on the top floor with a spacious terrace and unobstructed views of the Acropolis. Ancillary spaces such as locker rooms are located in the basement.

With its elongated footprint and narrow facades, the building's daylighting is a major challenge. To ensure that enough light can reach each office floor, the team relies on two systems working together:
The Kaleisocope is a light shaft in the center of the building that features prismatic mirror surfaces. A heliostat on the roof, which tracks the sun, directs sunlight into the shaft and is channelled downward, where it enters the workspaces and public areas through specially designed openings that increase in size with depth on each floor.
The second strategic element is light deflection from the south façade. The light shelves on the outside redirect natural light to penetrate far into the work area by deflecting it upward and radiating it from the ceiling thanks to a highly reflective surface. At the same time, they provide shading and serve as glare protection without obstructing visual contact with the outside, as the light control acts above eye level.