This project is about a single storey house (150 sq. m) built in the 60’s in a historic village, below the mountain Kithairon in Attika approximately 50 km away from Athens. The house was built in the middle of a plot of land as a single storey house with tile roof on a pilotis. Two verandas back and front create outdoor levels for the summer.
The owner, an artist who lives abroad, commissioned us to design and enclose the ground floor pilotis as a studio to work in relationship to the surrounding garden and connect it internally with the house, to create a situation of privacy for living and working, as a short term residence. The location provides a combination of mountain air and sea nearby, and due to it’s proximity to Athens (about 60 minute drive) is ideal all year round for the particular use. Privacy was one of the main demands of the owner, since the neighbouring houses are very near, and due to the difference in levels they are kind of overlooking into the garden.
The pilotis is part of the garden area, so the studio would be part of the garden. In order to give it more height we decided to make an excavation in the pilotis of about 80 cm, from which the new studio would be created as a sunken hard surface area within the existing garden. The soil from the excavation would then be moved into the garden to create raised levels in which new trees are planted and in this very natural way the house would be protected from the neighbouring properties as visual contact is obstructed by the plants and recess in level. Privacy will also be assisted by turning the orientation of the main entrance to the existing house from front to back.
The house is introverted in a way that will protect living inside and outside. The studio was treated as a hard landscape: a concrete slab surface with different levels sculpted and injected into the garden. Furniture and the staircase feature are part of it as built in elements. The ground level is a garden, a studio for living and working, indoors and outdoors, in support of the existing house on the first floor.
Artist’s studio
2006-9
Client: Private
Location: Attiki Completed
Project Team Architect: Eleni Kostika
Assistant architects: Christina Fraktopoulou, Chrysa Marouda,Yiannis Vogiatzis
Civil Engineer: Yiannis Tsopanakis – Ypsilon
Mechanical Engineer: Nikolas Nakos & Partners
Topography – Site: Grigoris Roubos
Landscape Architect: LANDECO – Filippos Kontomanolis
Construction: Yellow Constructions