House and Workshop in Drosia

Project Name: House and Workshop in Drosia
Construction year: 1999
Website:
Address: 71 Dionysou st., Drosia , ATHENS - Greece

Architect(s) : MOB architects (www.mobarchitects.gr)
Project Category: Housing | Office

Latitude: 38.1105
Longitude: 28.8577

General

To the unrefurbished ground floor of an existing 1973 dwelling in Drosia, the architects were asked to incorporate a new dwelling, a sculptor’s workshop and to design the elevations, the access points and the garden. In this case, the inspiration for the design approach to this building was the lifestyle of the artist – utiliser as well as its position in a newly developed suburb of Athens.

Design Concept

The intervention to the shell follows the existing rhythm enriching it with non-orthogonal shapes, bold colors and material textures. To satisfy the needs of the owners, the ground floor was restored, as previously was used as a storeroom and four small volumes were built as extensions of the ground floor, two of which are metal structures. Parallel to that, for maintenance reasons and for the unification of the design, external changes and repairs were made in the first floor.

Initially, the owner’s idea was to modify one of the storerooms to workshop and to share the upper level space with his parents, because he could not imagine being possible for a complete and independent dwelling to be formed there.

However, as the construction of the workshop was progressing, encouraged by the architects he decided to finally go on with the idea of an independent home.

The accesses were altered so that only one main entrance to the site serves the two residences and the workshop with two smaller car entrances.

The elevations of the building, internal and external, have as their feature the strong colors that follow the volumes and alternate playfully on the surfaces.

Interior furniture has been designed and made so that follows the form of the building to ensure the functionality of the spaces.

The extensions were either made of brick walls, colored with the technique of mixing plaster with color, which creates a bolder effect, or are metal structures.

Colors and Materials

The main volume was painted using solvent paints so that the color does not form a crust but reacts with the existing plaster and creates a visual texture by not being uniformed.

The materials used were marble combined with clay bricks for the exterior floors, in the interior, oak strips, ceramic pebbles and clay bricks were used for the floors and ceramic pebbles for the WC’s walls and floors.

Metal sheets were used in stairs and baseboards, aluminium, oak and polycarbonate sheets were used for the furnishings in the bedrooms and WCs.

Landscape design

The garden was designed following the concept of the independence of the two dwellings with different car accesses, and arranging the upper courtyard for the parents and the lower for the couple, the kids and their dog.

The house and garden as a uniformed abstract composition, plays an important part in the daily activities of the artist – occupier, operating as a base where sculptural objects are being placed, identified and judged within a procedure of experiments and transformations that have a lead over the final result. However, the frequent change of the sculptural objects in the interior and exterior spaces redefines the image of the house and interprets every time in different ways the design choices made.

Contributed by MOB architects