The plot is adjacent to the eastern boundary of Glyfada Golf Course. Our design approach starts with the introduction of architectural gestures that go beyond seeing the building merely as program and landscaped areas, but as the “sum” of multiple interacting experiences.
Two interconnected volumes, expressed connected and in a uniform structure, parallel to the long side of the plot, are organized in such a way to respond and interact with the “phenomena”, the inherent and intrinsic characteristics of the Place. Only when reconciled with nature, man is "in-the-world and in a secure relationship with it", “...and then, “we only dwell in the countryside, rooted in the ground, in the familiar (memory)”. Seeking to re-enact relationships that have been neglected due to the modern way of living, the foundational design intention refers to the idea of a sustainable living, where building, nature and inhabitants interact continuously and dynamically with each other.
The topography of the adjacent area - golf course - but also of the wider area, resembles a painting of waves, constantly transforming, often forming undulations, “in dialogue “with the constant movement of the sea. The design re-interprets the three-dimensional morphology of these natural undulations, resulting in a dynamic form. The variations of natural light on the surface of the articulated building mass, the close and distant view and the variations of the landscape depending on the season, establish a set of interactive relationships, leading to a new architectural discourse. One of the main design parameters was conceptualizing the complex edge conditions to inform and prioritize movements, attitudes, and spatial variations.
Following the landscape panorama, the overall structure shows different, counteracting interrelated views and spatial roles. The interior configuration negotiates the dialogue between the building and the landscape, organising the internal spaces into meeting areas or more private ones, into extroverts or introverts, into "everyday" or infrequent, corresponding to the gradual changes of view and space. The building emerges as a mediator between the user and the environment, in a canvas of narratives on which different streams of investigations meet. In this way, a form which senses, re interprets and adapts, is manifested, to balance the fore-mentioned altering and evolving relationships, capturing the overall logic of the design.
An earthly material and a "non-material" - marble and glass - are applied onto the building envelope to describe the transition from the natural to the built. Using a minimal expression of construction, the architectural vocabulary explores their combination, texture, colour, their reaction to the passage of time. In extent, white “scenes", which involve a range of materials - solid and perforated, smooth and rough, soft, and hard - form the style of the interior spaces, where natural light prevails. The boundary between "inside" and "outside" is blurred, and the terraces are joined with the interior of the building.
The microcosm that is born provides a complex experience that is related to the built element and nature, the foreground, and the background, the familiar and the unfamiliar, stimulating sensations and emotions corresponding to the atmosphere of the moment. "The Wave" sets limits, divides, simultaneously connects, produces space, and expands. Within space, in its entirety, there is man, in a continuous experiential present.
Team:
Architects: Potiropoulos+Partners
Photographers: Charalambos Louizidis, Katerina Glinou
