Athens, a modern European capital that seeks to be an upgraded and competitive city. However, a simple walk in the center is enough to realise the intense degradation and decline in the city's buildings. The center of Athens today is characterised by this situation in the building facilities in combination with the large number of objects without use and the scaffolding that is often found to cover the facades of building shells. Elements that refer to memory mechanisms and waiting states that may lead to total memory loss. Not only dilapidated and abandoned buildings, but also resigned and perhaps for some people objects with no use in the streets of the center, are recognized as memory bodies. Objects such as furniture, household appliances, personal belongings, hygiene items that left private use and turn into the public sphere, perhaps looking for a new form of use. The new form of use is often given through the city's antique shops. This projects is interested into the antique shops’ area influenced by the desire to maintain these public activities and the area hosting them.
Antique shops concerns an old job or occupation that deals with items that have lost their original use or their original user - whom they have been left either by choice or due to specific circumstances - and are looking for a new user who either needs them because of their function or collects them due to their age or other values they recognize on them. The antique shops in the center of the city are located together in Monastiraki, with the center the Avissynia square or the Athenian Yousourum. The evaluation and maintenance of the objects that the antique dealers work with requires great experience and much knowledge. For decades, these stores have offered in their own way to the commercial activities of the city, either by covering the needs of the citizens or by satisfying the interests of the buyers and collectors of the antiques. Unfortunately, this sector is currently experiencing severe survival problems that have led to the closure of a large number of shops. The financial crisis, hypermarkets and illegal street dealers are the main causes of these problems. The antique dealers proffesionals are afraid that illegal vendors exploiting the premises around their shops not only reduce their turnover but also lead to a change in the nature of the activities and as a result of the era.
AIR HUB visualise a huge workshop, with old craftsmen and young professionals in Aveissia Square, embracing the proffessions and uses the volume of their works have been decreased, stimulate the area of antique shops making it a thematic center. It aims to combine the past and the present, in the awakening of the consciousness of urban culture, in saving a historical employment by enhancing it against the economic crisis and in general improvement of the business, administrative and touristic center. These uses are housed in a metallic structure of 106 x 12 meters, which is connected to three existing buildings, one of which concerns a restored building. The connection of the new structure with the existing buildings is made through the staircases, using the existing shells as entrances for access to the new shell, while the basic elements used in the new construction are the metal structure, the solid concrete walls and the transparency through the openings and the metal mesh.