A Top-Floor Apartment Reopened to Light

In Vouliagmeni, Athens, D Flat by Virginia Malami transforms a top-floor apartment open on three sides into a clearer and more luminous domestic interior. In the existing layout, the living areas were oriented in a single direction, leaving the depth of the apartment underlit. The renovation opens the plan from end to end, allowing daylight to travel the full 14.5 metres of the interior from morning to evening.

The project establishes a renewed relationship between active shared spaces and quieter private rooms. Rather than treating the apartment as a sequence of separate rooms, the redesign introduces a continuous spatial order, balancing openness, privacy and the changing presence of light throughout the day.

Three Longitudinal Zones

The plan is organized into three longitudinal zones: a living zone, a central service and infrastructure zone, and a sleeping zone beyond. This division creates a contrast of tempo and atmosphere. The common rooms remain open and flexible, designed to host everyday life in different forms, while the bedrooms are more serene and contained.

The middle band becomes the threshold between these two conditions. It gives thickness to the plan, defines transitions and holds the more technical parts of the apartment, allowing the living areas and bedrooms to retain a sense of calm and clarity.

An Oak Spine for Domestic Infrastructure

At the center of the project is a continuous oak construction that runs along the length of the apartment. It is both furniture and space, a precise architectural element that gathers almost everything newly introduced by the renovation into one continuous system.

The oak spine contains the kitchen, entry coat storage, concealed bedroom doors, a utility cabinet with washing machine, WC, bookshelf and media cabinet. By consolidating these functions, the rest of the plan remains open and uncluttered. A continuous linear light follows the length of the element, turning it after dark into the apartment’s protagonist: an illuminated spine that gives the new program a single, unmistakable presence.

Material Continuity Through Marble and Oak

The material strategy is based on continuity rather than replacement. The existing beige Ioannina marble was preserved as a datum, while new oak was introduced in dialogue with the apartment’s earlier wood presence.

Together, marble and oak create a measured rhythm along the plan through pattern, joints and repetition. Red-and-white striped awnings were also reintroduced, echoing the original elements and carrying their graphic presence into the renewed apartment.

Reuse and Spatial Memory

Reuse forms an integral part of the project’s approach to sustainability and to the respect of what was already there. Where new marble was required in the kitchen after removing parquet, the material was sourced from the demolition rubble of a nearby renovation.

This decision reduces waste while extending the life of an existing material by giving it a new role within the apartment. The renovation therefore works not only with new elements, but also with fragments of material memory that are absorbed into the project’s contemporary organization.

Greek Atmosphere and Swiss Precision

D Flat also reflects the architect’s own trajectory. Raised within a Greek cultural context, with its particular relationship to light, materials and everyday outdoor living, and architecturally formed in Switzerland, where precision and functional clarity are fundamental, the project brings these two registers together without hierarchy.

Local atmosphere and familiar domestic cues are paired with a Swiss-inflected discipline of organization, concentrated infrastructure and concealed transitions. The result is an apartment that feels calm and usable, while retaining a strong relationship to its setting and history.

New Life for an Inherited Apartment

The renovation also acknowledges the personal history of the apartment, which is set within a structure originally built by the architect’s father. Its existing character and spatial memory are treated as material to be worked with, sharpened and carried forward rather than replaced.

Ultimately, D Flat is a project of alignment: plan with sun, new work with existing matter, and contemporary life with inherited character. Through a continuous oak spine, preserved marble and carefully organized light, the apartment is transformed into a calm and precise domestic interior.