Residential / Κατοικίες
Apartment building, Athens
proposal, 2010
The box house, the standard of modern typology "par excellence", (the much abused in Athens, resulting in a "vulgar modern" and the current situation as G.P.Lavvas says) and the protected inner courtyard, a feature one finds often in little houses and neoclassical mansions which still survive today in the Keramikos area from the 20s-30s are the basic principles of the proposal.
Simultaneously, the contractor was willing to sell the entire complex to an investor, which is why the proposal should be as changeable as possible regarding the location and dimensions of the apartments.
So the basic idea was to create 4 basic types of apartments, which can be combined in different ways, like Lego toy bricks.
Also, two blocks were introduced in the lot, who retreat behind the building line, creating an atrium at the core of the design. This gesture also offers natural light and ventilation to all the apartments. Especially for the volume on the back side of the plot, the gesture was necessary, in order to "open up" towards the Acropolis view.
Apartment building, downtown Athens
"Up to 35" competition proposal, 2009
with K.Chrysos
The typical "domus commune" student housing gathers both student units and amenities in one single monoblock building entity.
"Monowok" is the dome split into interconnecting sub-entities. Units and amenities are distributed in a number of satellite buildings, one for each lot, which are simultaneously interconnected, both conceptually and physically.
Each sub-entity is partially self-efficient, having its own basic amenities, like a laundry room in the basement, or bicycle stands on the ground floor.
Still, due to its overall area limitations and programmatic demands, it cannot host an adequate number of amenities that add up to the values of any shared housing project, like a restaurant, a meeting / gallery / event space, a gym, a coffee shop, a grocery store, bookstore or a computer shop.
Thus, we designated one of each of these uses, for the ground floor area of each lot. This creates the “Monowok” student housing network, a walking distance neighborhood student housing with a fusion of amenities uniting them.
Having these amenities within walking distance, one could talk of an urban network campus.
Students in Athens enjoy hanging out with the friends, but at the end of the day, will need their own separate space. Moving out from home means a lot for the young Greeks, (even if they have to go back to living with their parents after graduation), and very few would be interested to share a bedroom or a bathroom on a long term basis with someone that is not a close friend.
Having this fact in mind, we went on with a scheme of having mainly single student units.Examining lot 29, one can see that it becomes narrow towards the back (less than 9m wide), and it cannot fit 3 student units (with minimum dimensions).
Nevertheless, students will have common meeting spaces, like the ground floor amenity space already mentioned, that will be rent out to private investors. What is specifically important is that the scattered amenities spaces are placed in a way that will also serve the existing neighborhood.
Rural farmhouse, the Peloponnese, Greece
"Segm" competition proposal, 2007
The square and rectangular floor plan, found in the anonymous vernacular architecture of Greece, as well as the pitched roof, are revisited in an effort to design a contemporary farmer's house based on traditional spatial and formal relationships and connections.
The square plan is rotated 45 degrees, separating the private and common spaces. It is then wrapped by a stone wall, that keeps the interior cool, protecting it from the west and south summer sun.
The programmatic areas, the rooms, extend beyond the stone walls, revealing the use of each interior space. The plan rotation allows for a series of cavities and niches for storage in the interior spaces, as traditionally found in the rural farmhouses of Greece.
The roof is reversed, collecting the abundant winter rain water that can be used during the arid Greek summer. It's inclination allows installing PV cells that are 'hidden', in an effort to respect its natural context.
The stone walls extends all the way to the basement, the "Katoi", which has direct access to the outside and can be used for storage but also nestle livestock in winter.
Holiday houses in Evia island, Greece
competition proposal, 2006
Sloping sites with high inclination are difficult to accomodate using conventional systems, developed to work most efficiently in true horizontal and vertical axes. Evidence of this is the abundance of radical cuts and deep retaining walls found in hillside construction, a strategy meant to supress a slope's natural fall line in favor of the direction of the gravity. In our case, such a scenario would be inappropriate, due to its ecological and aesthetic brutality.
To solve this problem, the proposed buildings are treated as artificial landscape, coming to somplement the natural context; the ground floors are half dug within the land and the first floors are undulating surfaces covered with earth from the excavation site.
Axes that run the lots from one side to the other are introduced, in order to follow the contour lines of the ground, thus "hide" as much as possible of the ground floor within the land. Strips of building and landscape create now a rythm on the hill.
Townhouse Renovation, Southern Athens
design / build, 2007
The apartment would be occupied by a young couple and their daughter within a few months. The building was built by the family of the '70s and this apartment had suffered a series of interventions / additions over the years.
The result seemed rather like a"bricolage", a patchwork of spaces without some organization ,creating a series of functional problems.
The owner asked two bedrooms and a children's playroom, and the possibility of hosting relatives and friends for more than a weekend.
The proposal organizes the appartment around a central zone, a common core: the living room (extending up the roof) and the kitchen.
The small room next to the kitchen was turned into a guest house with separate entrance, providing the potential to be used exclusively by the children of the family in the future.