T-shaped dark megalith hosts back-to-basics young family home

[Applause] I like concrete it's a heavy material but here it seems it's gentle it's not something in a way all materials are heavy until the moment that you elevate them because architecture is the elevation of mother this prison is elevated 4 meters above ground and centrally supported by this massive column and you can do this only with concrete generally Keef is a suburb of Athens were in the beginning of essentially the rich Athenians had their villas their summer village but this part of Keef is young was the area where the gardeners leave this the stuff and had their you know like kind of humble little homes so this plots are small and there was a small kind of a little small tiny house in in this land plot when we bought it you know we didn't want to build anything bigger than that anyhow it was just a matter of finding the the ideal position in the land so as to have like a meaningful garden and enough light for the Sun to come in the house the size of the plot and the proximity of the buildings in the neighboring buildings I mean the size of this building has determined this because the major thing that we wanted to achieve is to allow as much as southern Sun to come into our plots of land and our house so everything has to be moved on the northern side of the land it had to be elevated to allow for the light in the Sun to come in and then the rest just followed and there is a filter that is created for the garden there is a filter that is created by the column and the climbing plants in between the inner life of the city and the street that's a filter of protection the neighbors it was a period where there was a lot of constructions and most of the people were going for the full maximum interior square meters for us that was not the main purpose to have the maximum amount of square meters inside we wanted to have mostly quality space and for us quality was having substantial garden the fact that the house is not massive we resolved this issue by creating basically a transparent kind of wall which doesn't create a hard border and and and the feel of the house is that it's much bigger you know it's much wider you are inside and then the border feels that it's up to the end of your land but if you use a garden even if and when you are sitting there in a way I mean the kids now they're not sitting in the garden but they are sitting you know kind of next to the garden maximizes the use of the seasons it maximizes the use of the exterior as it were because now it might be a bit cool to sit out there but you can still sit here and have the doors open the curtains during the day I like them allowing this transparency probably I mean I might close this just for a bit of privacy from the road because because there you have the plants so you can have the privacy so mostly would be like that and in the evening I don't like the reflection of the light on the glass so in the evening we put put down all the curtains then it becomes again a more in introvert kind of space and it brings you again inside see Harvard or oh yeah we do of course we have hunger the main feature of the facade is this open gutter that is Inox and when there is rain the water falls freely to the column and finally to the pond usually these gutters are closed but here it is open it's like the ones that you see in traditional architecture in the islands there is also a vertical cut there that in a way is related to the gutter and it's like a very very small opening of the interior towards the exterior I can have a glimpse to the exterior without in a way being noticed because it's so so narrow but from the interior the width is greater the same goal with this conical opening that allows for the Eastern Sun to enter in the morning in the kitchen that's why this opening is conical it's like a kind of like yes all this light that is coming from every part of the cube the interior is painted in dark colors in order that the inner life of the city is not exposed and Grill it loves the sound as well yes the best glass could have in terms of the energy sound and protection as well we tried a lot to make the kitchen more closed that's why we also elevated it a bit so that there is a feeling of Cocoon in the kitchen and the dining area and living room is more exposed to the garden this table is in pieces and it is moving in order to have flexibility and be able to have separate pieces for preparing the food or working with a laptop and then be able to have all the pieces together in order to have a big dinner so you can have different units depending on your needs like a big dining table or you know smooth working area which you can spend a lot of time here this is normally on a normal day this is kids desk with their books you know everything fits your lifestyle you have to be very alert but so this conventional box with the rooms that you go in and arrange your life as you want here you have to leave as this space dictates you of course we designed it and you liked it the stairs are just from this wire and also obviously on the world I mean this it helps that also this part is like very firmly supported on the wall hey my husband the other day you can almost put a couple pillows here and just like sitting grab a book and and enjoy the view my god does it know how it likes it again in the first days were removed so I was thrilled with the richness of the experiences that you can have in every point that we can sit in the house you have a different experience but more introvert more if you see the house in the evening it prepares you to bed this world is not rounded in order to be rounded its rounded in order to create the master bedroom base in a way that movement into it is unobstructed it would be a bit unpleasant to move in between this window and the wall with the corner there were at least fourteen different solutions for these three bedrooms even in a very small surface of 65 square meters we tried many many options and we enable the kids bedroom movies to be open you have two boys we wanted them to be able to communicate play together and then maybe when they grow up I mean still we can use this now this stones so it's a very soft border between yes for their kids Belarus is a soft border which can change in the future it's very practical it's you see it's 45 degrees on P so that you do not see the width of the would minimize as much as you can with the cluster and have a space which comes you for sleep we had to find a way to unify the bedrooms because they are really small their surface is really small again he ran out of choice with the two bedroom area very provision for want to separate like a panel and separately so they can communicate with each other yes bathrooms great actually it's like a light box isn't it yes the glass and stones so has a nice reflection of the light as well I mean this house has three doors this one the bathroom downstairs and this one it's like that since the rest is open but they're not just doors because they don't have frames to obstruct the continuation of the walls you know that so that's why it seems big and unattracted flowing the main trick that makes the sleeping quarters seem bigger than they are is the monochrome ot of the environment is that everything is painted in it this gray is not just the ceiling it's the same thing and there is an effort that also the wooden flooring takes the same tint even the shutters are the same gray the outside there was a deliberate decision from Eddie not to have openings towards the western side of the house so we made this hole in order to permit the Southern Sun on the bed so this is basically a chop here it's a big box yeah it's a big box floating floating over the ground floor because a plot was really small we had to elevate the prison because the interior and the exterior is one of a prism it rests on this beam and on this column there are only two main supportive elements what makes it quite intense is the fact that there is no column at this point what is quite peculiar about this staircase is that it is the same mistake is outside and inside the house practically is not a big house but because we have the option to create the basement that makes it a much larger house with these extra spaces I think that the most important thing about about the basement is how we resolve the lighting issues you know creating a bit a clear opening at the staircase allowing the light to come in and also mirroring the interior staircase to the outside and creating some sort of current glaze effectively you won't believe it how enjoyable it is you can sit here you can see the sky and the tree and despite the fact that this basement the basement is one of our favorite areas because first it's an area that has a very stable temperature this is a guest room again no walls it has a nice feel about it the way the concrete and the woods in the natural materials surround you I think creates a nice feeling this is about the nest and the intention was to create the sense that it's all kind of one material floor walls ceiling [Music] - goodness I was open to doing something different unique and I like modern I like modern living it is bold because also you're basically you're quite transparent to the people who have sizes the Muslims parents are being open or not hiding anything yeah you know of course yeah you know like you can limit yourself in many ways you can say oh there are mosquitoes we're not gonna do it right you know I put a screen on top in the bedroom so the mosquitoes don't go there and here candles a bit of repellant whatever it's why would you limit yourself when he can enjoy this it makes you more open it makes you more flexible if we you know we are constantly sharing space and we have to respect each other in an open-plan is that each of us can go and lock a door and be in a room today that doesn't mean that it was easy to be done it's not easy but eventually when you find it you keep the best result you

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 201,892

Rating: 4.8877864 out of 5

Keywords: Elevated open, modern architecture, athens, indoor outdoor home, concrete home, tilemachos andrianopoulos, tense architecture, green screen, natural cooling, daylighting

Id: sDJ-qj3jVrc

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 25 2019