MPNYC Strips Back 150-Year-Old Piraeus Warehouse for Adaptive Reuse

A roughly 150-year-old fir roof has resurfaced above a former port warehouse on Polydefkous Street in Piraeus, Greece, after Manhattan Projects New York City (MPNYC) stripped away the suspended ceilings that had concealed it. The building now operates as a combined office, showroom, and gallery, and it opens in October 2026 with a photography exhibition.

The project sits diagonally opposite Castor Place, another MPNYC building, giving the firm two adaptive reuse projects facing each other on the same Piraeus street. Andreas Kostopoulos, who imagined the space as an in-real-life venue for exchange, sees it as a place where practitioners working across art, craft, and design can work alongside one another and present their ideas collectively.

The warehouse has accumulated several distinct lives since it was originally constructed. It first operated as a storage facility serving the port. It was then divided into smaller units for different types of cargo. Repair workshops followed, introducing concrete mezzanines, columns, and floor slabs into the tall interior. Later interventions included an industrial-equipment showroom, suspended ceilings, and a series of rooms for a Middle Eastern film-production company.

MPNYC treats the existing structure as a found object, using subtraction to recover its earlier character. The team removes layers of construction that had concealed the older fabric of the building, reopening its original doorways and allowing daylight to travel deeper into the interior. Minimal steel pivot doors now occupy the restored openings. The architects also discovered timber shutters inside the walls, which they restored and returned to use.

The material strategy extends beyond cleaning and exposure. The project reuses reclaimed brick for small partitions, thresholds, and window sills, while existing masonry and concrete structures are cleaned and left exposed. The corner space, which had undergone some of the most extensive alterations, receives a liquid-metal insulation finish — the same treatment used in the upper volume of Castor Place.

More recent partitions beneath the old roof remain in place, but their role changes. The walls that once divided the building into smaller rooms now become gallery surfaces. Objects and materials sit among the traces of earlier occupations, allowing the architecture to remain part of the display. The interior functions as a showroom without adopting the neutrality normally associated with one.

Reuse also operates at the level of furniture. Metal props originally made for the inaugural exhibition at Castor Place have been reused as tables and display units. Old timber tool-storage cabinets become material displays and bookshelves, extending the strategy of reuse beyond the building itself.

The team describes the space as a 'slider', with rooms able to shift between different functions according to the needs of the people using them. The kitchen can operate as a workshop or model-making room, or become a pop-up restaurant or café. Meeting rooms can similarly become gallery spaces, project rooms, or workshops.

With the photography exhibition scheduled for October 2026, the building's next life begins as a venue where the remnants of its port, workshop, and showroom past remain on view alongside the work it will host.