House in Marmari

The house is integrated in a rocky, steep property overlooking the South Euboean Gulf. The existing stone building and its surrounding walls stand as fossils, inside the natural landscape.

The stone part of the house is reconstructed in accordance with its initial structure, preserving the wooden roofs and mortar joinery, to highlight the sculptural terrain.

Existing openings are modified to comply with the new use of spaces. The introvert stone volume and its small openings mark the existing building as the most private space, including bedrooms and bathrooms.

A new, white volume, lands on the terrain as a foreign body, superimposed on the old stone building, balancing at the steepest part of the property in an act of levitation. Inside are housed all everyday activities, with the lounge, dining area and kitchen inside an integrated space that is internally defined with three large openings.

The latter, rigidly places, frame the sea and the mountain, focusing upon the village that ends in the most active site in the vicinity: the harbor.

Access to the house, and the connection between the old and the new building, is done through a metal and glass prism functioning as a buffer zone, intended to keep the connection between both buildings almost invisible.

The landscape remained untouched to the largest possible extent; the only interventions involve low stone retaining walls, suggesting internal circulation routes that constitute a system of movement on the site, in order to maintain the existing topography.

Gkotsis Serafimidou Architects

George Messaritakis