Astir Marina Landscape and Public Realm

Located on the southern coast of Athens, the 6-hectare Astir Marina is a new waterfront development providing 60 berths, retail, restaurants, and marina amenities. The design reinterprets the marina as a layered territorial map, integrating historic contours, marine ecologies, and engineering data to generate its topography and spatial logic. Native planting and coastal ecologies define a soft, shaded waterfront of pedestrian routes, connecting people to the water and softening the marina’s hard edges. The result is a hybrid environment — a waterfront park that also happens to be a marina — where landscape, ecology, and infrastructure are conceived as one continuous system.

One way to approach designing the artificial landscape of a marina is as a blank site—a tabula rasa—but in reality, the sea conceals complex ecosystems continuous with the visible ground and hidden just below the water. We explored ways of representing this submerged landscape, drawing inspiration from nautical maps with topographic contours—traces of terrain projected onto a flat surface. Using World War II aerial scans, we mapped the site’s original beaches, coves, islands, and seabed topography, layering these historic contours onto the new engineered land of the marina to create a compelling graphic framework for the project. Another key driver was our analysis of existing marinas, which are often harsh, infrastructural spaces dominated by concrete and cars. For Astir Marina, we relocated primary parking to the rear of the site, behind a green buffer of planted mounds—an archipelago of “green islands” that softens the relationship between public space, landscape, ecology, and marina infrastructure.

There are four main elements to the design - a 2m grid, the historic contour lines, the green islands, and the retaining wall at the back of the site. 1) Grid: Rotated 23 degrees to align with the central basin, this site-wide grid uses a material hierarchy—honed basalt stone near retail buildings, Portuguese pavers at the waterfront promenade, and two-colored asphalt for roads—creating shared car-pedestrian surfaces that minimize kerbs and prioritize walkability. 2) Contours: Marble offcuts from nearby quarries form contour lines mapping the historic seabed topographic lines. Polished smooth like terrazzo on the main plaza and left rougher elsewhere, they create a striking graphic contrast against the ordered grid. 3) Green Islands: Lush planted mounds act as green buffers that separate cars from the water's edge, transforming the harsh marina environment into a pleasant waterfront public realm. Each three-dimensional mounded island has a unique geometry, creating a surreal new topography and immersive public landscape. 4) Retaining Wall: Gabion walls with stratified stones (smallest to largest, bottom to top) form terraced habitats along the 4-6m slope. Inspired by Greek agricultural walls, they retain earth and shape paths that link the adjacent hotel to the marina while supporting local wildlife.