Projects
2 projects
Kifisia Apartment
At the entrance to Kifisia, where the avenue comes in from Athens, a pair of round volumes stands clear of the ground on cylindrical supports. This is the Stroggyli Polykatoikia — the round apartment building — designed by Nikos Despotidis and built in 1973–1974. The concrete is left exposed and the balconies run continuously around the circumference, so the elevation reads as a stack of horizontal bands with neither a front nor a back. Contemporaries treated the structure as a technical accomplishment, and accounts from the period describe architects travelling from abroad to see how it had been done. It has been a fixed point in the northern suburbs ever since, known by its shape rather than by its address, though remarkably little about it has been written down: the building appears in no published survey of significant Athenian apartment buildings, and Despotidis himself leaves almost no published trace. The geometry sets the terms for everything inside it. The perimeter curves away continuously, so partitions meet the façade at an angle that changes along its length, and the corners a rectangular plan would rely on are not available. The 80 m² apartment that Georgios Apostolopoulos Architects has now reworked was organised as a sequence of enclosed rooms: two narrow corridors, the bathroom occupying the centre, and the principal living areas compressed into a narrow zone with limited access to daylight. The renovation began by taking things away. Every internal partition was removed, leaving the existing structure exposed and the floor plate readable in one view. What followed did not put the walls back. Georgios Apostolopoulos Architects treats the apartment as a continuous interior and hands the work of division to a set of joinery elements, which define how each part of the plan is used without closing it off. The question the project puts is whether a home needs rooms at all, or only the things that rooms were supposed to provide. The kitchen answers first. Placed at the centre of the plan, it is built as a solid volume and handled less as a room than as an object to be inhabited — cooking, working and meeting all collect around it. The island can be approached and used from every side, which is what makes it the social instrument of the apartment rather than a service counter: it supports the routines of a day without setting an order for them. Living and dining open out from it through gentle transitions rather than doorways. That continuity carries into the main bedroom, which reads as an extension of the living area instead of a sealed room. The vanity runs past the bathroom enclosure, and the wardrobes work as layered filters rather than partitions. Privacy here is not fixed in the plan but adjusted in use — a matter of where someone stands and what is drawn across, negotiated through occupation. At the far end of the apartment the second bedroom is not built. In its place sits a flexible joinery system: a fold-down bed, an integrated desk and sliding panels that let the same square metres move between sleeping, working and storage. It behaves less like a room than like a piece of domestic equipment, and it is the clearest statement of the project's argument — that use can be held by furniture as competently as by walls. The material handling keeps out of the way of all this. A monochromatic palette holds the interior quiet and lets the original structure stay present in the room, while slim-frame windows admit as much light as the openings allow, so the continuity between one part of the plan and the next is carried by daylight as much as by geometry. What results is a domestic interior organised as a system of spatial relationships rather than a collection of rooms: boundaries that stay fluid, privacy that can be dialled up or down, and a plan whose order emerges from how it is lived in.
Payz House
Nestled within the rugged terrain of Ardèche, France, Payz House by Alors Studio redefines the relationship between architecture and its natural surroundings. Originally built in 2007 as a seasonal retreat, the residence was conceived as a series of three separate structures, connected only by exterior pathways. Its design responded to a transient lifestyle, allowing inhabitants to move between the units while immersed in the surrounding landscape of olive trees, aromatic plants, and dry stone walls. The recent expansion, however, shifts the home’s purpose from a temporary getaway to a more permanent dwelling. Alors Studio's intervention introduces a thoughtful reconfiguration that enhances both the house’s functionality and its engagement with the site. A new corridor now links two of the original structures, integrating additional living spaces, including two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a reading nook. This passageway transforms the house’s circulation, creating a seamless yet subtle connection between its distinct volumes. Materiality plays a defining role in the project's architectural language. The house’s original concrete facades, inspired by the region’s dry stone walls, establish a sense of permanence within the landscape. The extension continues this dialogue but shifts its focus inward. While the earlier structures embrace panoramic views of the terrain through expansive glass openings, the new addition fosters introspection, framing previously overlooked corners of the property, such as hidden terraces and aged stone walls. Inside, built-in wooden benches placed beneath windows offer serene spaces for contemplation. The interplay between raw concrete and warm wood textures fosters a tactile harmony, balancing industrial robustness with a welcoming atmosphere. Brown sheer curtains filter sunlight, adding subtle warmth to the otherwise neutral palette of concrete, stone, and wood. The new entrance serves as both a threshold and a statement. Marked by a bold steel door and a circular concrete element, it announces the home’s evolution while maintaining its understated presence within the landscape. A cantilevered concrete slab extends outward, providing shelter and reinforcing the house’s architectural rhythm. By bridging modernity with vernacular references, Payz House achieves a delicate equilibrium. It neither imposes itself on the landscape nor retreats into obscurity. Instead, Alors Studio has crafted a residence that simultaneously reflects and reinterprets its surroundings, offering a timeless meditation on habitation and place. Below, the architectural plans and sections illustrate the spatial organization and design details that define Payz House. These drawings reveal the interplay between volumes, the thoughtful transitions between spaces, and the material relationships that ground the house in its environment.