Curved Terrain

The design creates a house that blends in its natural environment, comprised of steep gravel slopes, dressed in scattered wild thorny bushes, and beautiful large rock formations.

 

Context Integration

The most prominent landscape features, however, were the short, dry-stone retaining walls, locally called ‘xerolithies’, created long time ago, for land cultivation purposes. These walls, usually no more than a meter high, formed flat stripes of land parallel to the slope and extended along the entire surface of the hillside. The site with its ‘xerolithies’ was the spark of inspiration.

 

 

Morphological Approach

When one thinks of the Greek Islands and their vernacular architecture, scattered and stacked white boxes come to mind. The first step was to challenge this morphological preconception by imagining the main facades (front and back) of the house being formed as ‘xerolithies’. They start low and gradually develop at a sufficient height for a house. They move gently closer and away of the slope, independently from one another, forming spaces in between them. To achieve this, all the functions of the house were placed sequentially, making it long and narrow.

The walls have a lightness seeming as if like they were affected by the strong Cycladic winds, like ribbons in the air. To complete the ‘xerolithia’ likeness, the roof of the house was covered with soil and vegetation, emulating the natural landscape. This made the house almost invisible, especially when seen from behind and afar. Another important feature of the Cycladic rural house is the wooden pergola consisting of thick, raw, smooth, wooden beams and columns with a bamboo cover, all in their natural color. This structure appears also in the interior of the house, on the ceiling, following the traditional way of constructing roofs.

 

Material Palette

This particular element was used along the entire length of the structure, inside and outside. The beams supporting this structure, naturally, could not be placed parallel to each other; instead, they follow the house’s curvy morphology, like vertebrae on a long spinal cord. As a result, the bamboo was knitted in a fish bone manner, creating a unique pattern with beautiful shade textures. The doors and windows are wooden and simple, with a light olive color, and the main exterior walls are made of stone with no joint mortar. Both these decisions follow the traditional style and technique.

 

Vernacular identity

The proposal envisions the development of a 29-villa complex in Bourboulos area of Santorini, Greece. Santorini is a volcanic island located in the southern Aegean Sea. Characteristics of the island are the steep terrain, the rocky landscape and the harsh vegetation.

 

Context integration

Due to the particularity of the topography, it is very common to encounter the ‘ksirolithia’ in the Santorinian landscape. ‘Ksirolithia’ is a method of stacking different sized stones to create a retaining wall. Initially it was used by the farmers to even the terrain in order to cultivate it. This method is a vital part of the island’s structure and its vernacular identity. It is strongly rooted in the landscape that one cannot read it without it.

 

 

Layout Organization

The development is structured by a single unit module which is multiplied 29 times to reach the desired program requirements. The form of the unit derives from the traditional module and is reshaped to optimize the movement, the flow and the number of the units in the plot. The units are positioned strategically in the plot and together with two different types of circulation, the outer for the car and the inner for the residents, create spatial variety and spaces with different qualities and purpose. Embracing the conditions and the characteristics that define the specificity of the place become the focus for the design of the masterplan.

 

 

Design Philosophy

Consequently, the design philosophy employs all the different natural and vernacular characteristics with a big focus on the ‘ksirolithia’ method of building. The relationship of the natural and the programmatic is applied both in plan and section. Specifically, in plan the volcanic rock pavement in the outer circulation area and the gradience to the vegetation in the inner common areas of the development merges the landscape with the structure, while in section the segregation of the landscape as well as the stacked buildings, amplify the gradience with the immediate context.