How do you inhabit beauty?
The question, perhaps too general if not vague, at least is not unfair since it refers to the fact that often the anxiety caused to us by our concern to do "right" - for the owner, for the planning authorities, for the contractors – conceals the implied imperative form of the question, "How must we inhabit beauty?", the implication being that it is not enough to do merely the right but what befits the situation, what is "proper" with an ethical component.
Even so, what is appropriate when we plan to inhabit beauty in the landscape? And here lies the dilemma: Nature, by its nature, is beautiful by birth. This is what the country house in Tinos is aimed at, the pleasure of habitation discreetly weaving itself into the sensitive Cycladic landscape.
The property is located on a steep slope in the southern part of Tinos, east of the settlement of Dio Choria. With the mountain at its back, it has an unobstructed view of Hora and the port to the south, and the islands of Syros, Mykonos, Rhenia, Delos, Naxos, Paros and Sifnos, in the middle of the sea.
The basic compositional gestures are that on the one hand, the body of the house nestles deep into the earth to its back, while, on the other hand, the view - the immense blue of the sea and the sky - tears the ground in front of it, like a scalpel, reversing the direction of the gaze and thus, the view reversed, becomes a face. The only element that brings the interior of the house out into the light is the long canopy, an extension of the ceiling of the living space, that runs along the entire length of the residence and, by protruding from the earth, marks its existence. To its back, a continuation of the slope, stand the walls of stone, earth-of-the-earth in a vertical assembly. The house exists as a slot in the hill.
Courtyards, sculpted into the body of the house, bring the sun and the sky inside and contribute to protection from the almost permanent northwest wind, thus allowing the unhindered enjoyment of the Cycladic climate. The sun, however, is also filtered by the pergolas, where the intense shadows in their continuity are an expression of the architectural simplicity of the house. At the same time, the courtyards function as relational joints that expand the interior spaces and offer different living experiences.
Unique projection from the quiet face of the house, a small ground-floor volume, the first view and a metaphor of the residence. There, all materials of the metaphor meet the gaze, such as the pattern of the dovecotes, scattered among the typical houses of Tinos, with Chora in the background. There also inserts the long, narrow pool which runs the full length of the house. There stands, as well, the door of the house.
It is this very juxtaposition between the representative archetypal elements of the composition, which could also be seen as their coexistence, that constitutes in this space the experience of entry to this residence in the ground on the landscape, not only as a concept but as a function and as a sensation. This is where the movement, threading around, allows for the insertion of habitation into beauty, anew.
