Apartment Building in Glyfada III
Apartment Building in Glyfada II
Apartment Building in Glyfada I
Apartment Building in Exarcheia
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Athens, Greece
100m2
completed
2018
John Karahalios
Elisavet Plaini
Epikyklos Technical Construction
Nikos Papageorgiou
The apartment is located in a two-story complex of the 70s, at a central street of the suburb of Glyfada. The dense and complicated layout of the original apartment resulted in a very irregular outline.
The arrangement was reshuffled and the layout was completely redesigned to address the new needs and functions that emerged. With the new program the general plan is organized as an open cohesive space in which the limits between public and private are dissolved. The living area, the kitchen, the guest room and the bedroom are transformed from precisely defined rooms to overlapping fields.
The public and semi-public areas of the apartment are articulated towards two directions and are intersected at the heart of the apartment. A freestanding prism is placed at this exact concurrence. The prism contains basic functions and at the same time organizes and suggests the adjacent areas. The bedroom, the main private space, is located at the edge of the apartment as part of a larger enclave that can be isolated with the use of sliding panels.
All the surfaces that define the original envelope (floors, walls, ceilings) are dealt with a monochromatic approach, in an effort to unify the fragmented geometry. On the other hand the freestanding prism is treated as a black box, the shape and presence of which are clearly defined. The presence of these two conditions leads to a dipole of tension both in terms of color and geometry.
The principal lighting design choice for the public areas is a system of suspended rails with spotlights that creates a cross and travels throughout the space. This also serves as a secondary treatment of unification. The lighting for the secondary functions and the rest of the areas is descriptive and complimentary.
The busy envelope of the apartment in Glyfada became the springboard to a geometry of overlapping shapes. This geometrical principle led to a design approach that suggests that different spatial conditions can emerge not only by firm limits and separations but also by diffusion and co-existence.
Plan