KATOIKIA II

Design Team : Katerina Vordoni, Fania Sinaniotis

Photos: George Kordakis

Year of completion: 2009
Location: Antiparos, Athens, Greece

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The house is found at the valley of Adiparos Island, in a rural environment, with mild topography, scarce density surrounded by natural vegetation and cultivations of olives and vines. It is a reconstruction of a traditional “katikia” redesigned and implemented with respect to the natural environment and to the traditional architecture.The house evolved from the ruins of a rural building, known traditionally as “katikia” that was located a at the end of the plot on a small hill. Internally it constituted from a series of small individual single – spaces that contained different functions related to the needs of then residents.

​The basic methodology was the preservation and evolution of this traditional typology. The aim was that the architectural product provides “history and memory” and at the same time however a sense of modern aesthetics adapted in the needs of a contemporary “rural” everyday routine.

​It can be characterised as small, simple, low, modest, rough, a building that remains close to its environment and surrounds its user. These characteristics convey a calm sense and they develop a simple way of life that covers the basic needs.

Both pre-existing and new additional elements compose the harmonised coexistence old and new maintaining the scale and the logic of reconstruction. The single level of three gentlemen of countries, the linear alternation of spaces with central axis the cooker and the direct contact with the by far bigger exotic courtyard are these give the sense of simplicity in the use.

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