Agis Mourelatos Architects complete ground-floor apartment in Athens where original and modern features coexist

Athens-based Agis Mourelatos Architects has converted a former shop of an old Athenian apartment building in the area of Kallithea into a ground-floor private residence, ensuring privacy and space flexibility. Beyond the proposal’s main aim, one can trace the fundamental synthetic principle of an occupant living on the ground floor in plain sight. Privacy is secured through the discretion of design. “A systematic layering juxtaposed over the existing envelope seeks to resolve the aim set. Reversibility of construction independent of the existing structural system has been of paramount importance, both interior as well as exterior of the shell”, says the team. Steel, wood and plaster provide the vocabulary for a minimal architectural interplay. The facade, as the main key figure of the residence and its “public” face towards the neighborhood, reveals the two-story height of the existing space, introducing transparency, security and shading through a system of sliding blinds. A floating light metal structure, central to the geometry of the space, accommodates the private uses of the residence. The transparency of space is ensured by the perforated wooden floor allowing the gradual unfolding of a vast majority of functions. Storage areas are combined with the elevated wooden floor wrapped around the main architectural gesture. The proposed architectural intervention attempts to develop a dialectical relationship between the existing situation and the final design, in a subtle yet expressing manner where the rules of structural construction are met in full.