Hasta La Ideas

Greek studio Sinas Architects has built a house on the island of Serifos, taking cues from local dry stone walls to make the building as inconspicuous as possible.

The walls of the two-bedroom house are designed to look like the stone retaining walls that are typical of Greek landscapes. Known locally as xerolithies, these low walls were traditionally used in the cultivation of land.

George Sinas, founder of Sinas Architects, realised that this type of wall could be used to create a building that merges with the sloping topography. He called the house Xerolithi, in tribute.

“These walls are very common in the Greek Mediterranean countryside,” Sinas told Dezeen.

“In a very subtle way, they reveal the presence of man in areas that otherwise seem untouched by civilisation. It only seemed fitting to experiment with this element and to see how it could create shape and space.”

These xerolithi walls make it difficult to understand where the landscape ends and the house begins. This effect is emphasised by the roof, which is covered in gravel and native shrubs to help it fit in with its surroundings.

In fact, the house contains 245 square metres of floor space, as well as terraces that wrap all around the living spaces.

“The walls have a lightness, like ribbons in the air,” said Sinas.

“They seem to be moving gently closer, away from the slope and independently from one another, forming living spaces in between.”

The form of the building dictated a linear layout for the interior.

The volume is divided into two blocks, with the larger containing the living spaces and the primary bedroom. Two additional guest bedrooms are located in the smaller block, plus there’s also a basement.

There are two sheltered terraces that can function as outdoor dining spaces, one that slots in between the two blocks and a second located at the eastern end of the house.

While only the first is sheltered beneath the main roof, both are framed by wooden pergola structures with bamboo canopies. With their irregular arrangements of wooden beams, these pergolas boast an unusual chevron pattern that creates patterns of light and shadow.

This same materiality also features inside the house – wooden ceilings joists are exposed overhead and infilled with alternating sections of bamboo.

“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,” said Sinas.

“As a result the bamboo was knitted in a fishbone manner, creating a unique pattern with beautiful shade textures.”

Most of the internal walls are plastered, giving a bright and airy feel to the interiors, while doors and inbuilt furniture are made from solid wood.

The bedrooms all have glazed doors that open out to a front patio with a sea view. The living room has glazing on both sides, allowing it to open onto both this space and a secluded patio at the rear, which offers more privacy and shelter from the wind.

Xerolithi is currently being used as a rental property for vacations. Sinas hopes it will set an example for a new type of Greek architecture, more in keeping with the landscape than the bright white boxes that the islands are known for.

“When one thinks of the Greek Islands and its vernacular architecture, scattered and stacked white boxes come to mind,” said Sinas, explaining his ambition to “challenge this morphological preconception”.

“The main goal for this project was to experiment with alternative forms,” he added, “different to the archetypical Cycladic architecture model, yet respecting all the basic elements that comprise its character, and taking into consideration the amazing scenery that would host this new addition.”

Also on the island of Serifos, Greek studio Mold Architects partially submerged a house with views of the sea into a rocky hillside.

Photography is by Yiorgos Kordakis, with styling by Anestis Michalis.

Project credits

Architectural design: Sinas Architects
Collaborator: Maria Mamoura
Interior design: Olga Ktena, Sinas Architects

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London architecture studio Daab Design has turned a former art storage vault in Marylebone, London, into a two-bedroom apartment full of Georgian period features that were restored with the help of an archaeologist.

Before the renovation began, the Grade II-listed basement flat was boarded up for decades and featured a dark, cramped interior.

“The flat had suffered from years of unsympathetic alterations – poor design decisions, neglect, cheap overlaid materials and clumsy partitioning, which distorted and confused the layout,” Daab Design explained.

The studio stripped back more recent additions such as vinyl flooring, peeling paint and roofing over the two courtyards to reveal the building’s original features and generous proportions.

“Much of the flat was boarded up in an effort to protect the strong room, which had been used as a vault by an art dealer,” said Daab Design co-founder Anais Blehaut.

“The benefit of this was that the partitions and vinyl were installed straight on top of original features and actually covered and preserved them over time. So what we thought was lost at first glance was waiting to be found.”

The studio rearranged the floor plan to create a clean, simple and functional layout adapted for modern living.

From the street, stairs lead down to a recovered Georgian stone courtyard that serves as the entry to the apartment while another spacious courtyard bookends the property at the back.

Two bedrooms are located at the front near the entrance while a bathroom and open plan living space and kitchen occupy the rear.

The kitchen nook is painted in muted blue and stands in what remains of the art dealer’s concrete strong room.

“It took contractors 10 days to demolish a portion of the vault’s 500-millimetre-thick concrete walls and six people to move the heavy steel door across the courtyard to its new home as the door of the wine cellar,” Daab Design recalled.

This is located in a generous guest studio beyond the rear courtyard, which also features a bathroom, utility room and play area, all painted in olive green.

The firm enlisted an archaeologist and a team of structural engineers to go through an “almost surgical” process of recording, identifying and protecting the apartment’s heritage features, including windows, wooden doors, architraves, York stone flooring and an original outdoor larder.

“Upgrading the floors, repairing the walls and installing new services was a complex and intricate effort in conserving the period detailing,” said the studio.

Daab Design chose to finish the walls in various shades of green and white to offset the original York stone flooring that is revealed in sections throughout the space.

Green was also used on contemporary additions such as velvet curtains and glazed terracotta bathroom tiles to create the impression of a leafy garden reflecting green-tinged light into the flat.

Blehaut, who founded the studio in 2014 alongside Dennis Austin, explained that the studio wanted to seamlessly blend the flat’s restored historical features with contemporary interventions and modern technology.

These include “invisible” retrofitted services like underfloor heating, LED cove lighting, USB sockets in recessed floor boxes and flush walk-in showers that help to “reveal the simplicity of the space”.

Elsewhere in London, Holland Harvey has revamped a row of heritage-listed Georgian townhouses to create a hotel with relaxed, Scandi-inspired interiors.

Photography is by Jim Stephenson.

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London studio Alexander Owen Architecture drew on its clients’ love of modernism and pop art to create a colourful kitchen and terrace at Amott Road in East Dulwich.

Geometric shapes, timber curves and bold pigments characterise the project, which also involved adding a modest side extension to the end-of-terrace property in southeast London.

Owners Simon Ryder and Carolyn Norgate had lived in the property for nearly 20 years, but didn’t like spending time in the kitchen as it was dark and disconnected from the garden.

Alexander Owen Architecture redesigned the space on a tight budget and with little change to the overall footprint – earning a spot on this year’s Don’t Move, Improve! shortlist for its work.

The studio took inspiration from Ryder and Norgate’s favourite artists and designers. The couple owns pieces by pop artists Jasper Johns and Peter Blake, as well as abstract expressionist Terry Frost. They also like fashion designer Paul Smith for his playful use of colour.

The clean lines, sinuous forms and use of light, meanwhile, come from the work of Alvar Aalto, whom Ryder and Norgate have admired since a trip to Helsinki that included a visit to the modernist designer’s home and studio.

“We strive to design homes as unique as their owners, so we took our design cues from the various design inspirations the clients gave us and turned this into a piece of architecture in a bid to merge the balance between art, architecture and furniture design that the clients love,” said the studio.

To give the couple the connection to the garden they sought, the studio demolished the existing rear lean-to and inserted arched double doors that open directly onto the terrace.

It also added a small side extension with many windows, making room for a dining nook within the kitchen.

Inside, timber ceilings that curve down into walls are combined with yellow cabinetry and a turquoise splashback.

Outside, there is a feature facade and geometric seating installation made with a silicone render in bright yellow, ultramarine blue and blush pink.

Aalto gets a further nod with three of his Artek Golden Bell pendant lights installed over the kitchen table.

Alexander Owen Architecture completed the Amott Road renovation in September 2020. The studio was founded by Richard Bridges and James Webster, who first met at school and both went on to work at London studio Foster + Partners. The pair contributed their middle names to form Alexander Owen.

A previous renovation they undertook in the same neighbourhood of East Dulwich featured a marble-clad extension and garden room.

Photography is by French + Tye.

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A photography book by Mary Gaudin and Matthew Arnold reveals how the Christchurch Style movement produced an array of distinctive modernist houses in the New Zealand city in the 1960s.

I never met a straight line I didn’t like features images by photographer Gaudin and text by Arnold, who is co-founder of design agency Sons & Co. It showcases 12 well-preserved examples of homes built in the Christchurch Style.

Adapted from a Danish housing model, these properties explored building materials and techniques that were highly radical in their context.

“There’s a running joke that someone in 1950s Christchurch owned a book of contemporary Danish homes, and that denied all contact with the wider world, local architects set about endlessly recreating them with the limited materials they had to hand,” Arnold told Dezeen.

“In turn, they accidentally created one of the few original and lasting cultural movements in New Zealand’s modern history.”

The project builds on a previous book by Gaudin and Arnold, Down the long driveway, you’ll see it, which looked at midcentury homes from all across the country.

This time around the pair chose to focus specifically on Christchurch, believing this small conservative city to have been an epicentre of architectural creativity at this point in history.

France-based Gaudin grew up in the city, while Arnold is based close by, so Christchurch Style is something they are both familiar with, yet the movement has not been widely written about in architectural history.

“In the same way you can’t talk about New Zealand music without talking about the Dunedin Sound; you can’t talk about New Zealand architecture without acknowledging the Christchurch Style,” said Arnold.

Five of the projects are by well-known firm Warren & Mahoney, one of the main pioneers of the Christchurch Style.

Its projects, which include the JH Elworthy House (1969) and HR Irving House (1968), explored the potential of the concrete block in residential architecture.

Other highlights include the G Steven Beaven House by Hunt & Associates (1967), which Arnold describes as a “modernist’s Toad Hall”, and the PNG Blaxall House by Griffiths & Moffat (1967), which Gaudin says is “brimming with quiet drama”.

“Rooms and spaces are revealed slowly and gently,” she said. “The Japanese idea of water flowing through the house, dividing spaces, gives the house a mediative quality, whilst having the feeling of being firmly rooted in New Zealand.”

What all these homes have in common, according to Arnold, is that even though they were luxury homes, they were built from very modest materials.

“It was all about the architecture, not the fittings,” he said. “So in that respect, there’s an economy and permanence to them.”

“If you look at the Webb Flats, by Warren & Mahoney, they’re affordable housing without design compromise,” he continued. “They’re perfectly formed, finished with simple, hard wearing ‘tenant-resistant’ materials and are still the local benchmark for the inner-city bachelor pad.”

Only a limited number of Christchurch Style homes still exists, as many have been insensitively altered or demolished over time, while others were destroyed in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

The authors hope that this book will help to shine a light on this particular style of architecture and encourage others to place greater value on it.

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Shopping centres don’t have to “bright, white and shiny” according to AIM Architecture, which has transformed the Xintiandi mall in Shanghai by adding natural materials and plants.

The previously underused atrium has been reimagined in the spirit of a garden plaza, with wooden surfaces, plants hanging down from the balconies and natural light filtering in from above.

Architect Wendy Saunders, co-principal of AIM Architecture, said the aim was to bring nature into a type of space that is typically very sterile.

“The sheer scale and amount of shopping malls in Asia can be overwhelming,” she told Dezeen. “Materials are usually very bright, white and shiny, and lack any natural feeling or environment.”

“Here, we tried to defy that,” she said. “Materials were chosen to enhance the feeling of an oasis.”

AIM’s first move was to open up a skylight that had been partially covered over. This means that natural light can now filter into the Xintiandi atrium from all around.

A wooden trellis structure was installed around the three floors of galleries that surround the atrium. This acts a support structure for large planting boxes, which are filled with tropical greenery.

There are also some larger planters in the middle of the atrium, containing a mix of trees, leafy plants and succulents. These boxes are set on castors, so they can be easily moved around if necessary.

“Originally we wanted huge trees in the atrium planters,” said Saunders, “but with the weight, and also the need for flexibility for the plaza, it made sense to reduce to a more manageable size.”

AIM designed these planters, as well as a series of bench seats that are styled to feel like park furniture. They are arranged over four groups of natural-fibre carpets, which help to break down the space into zones.

“It was important for us to create areas where people could sit and not feel lost in the space,” added Saunders.

The result is a space that can function as a destination in its own right, rather than simply as a transition space between the entrance and the shops.

Saunders hopes the space will become equally as vibrant as the pedestrianised streets that Xintiandi is known for.

“As an architect and resident of Shanghai, a city of 25 million, I am always very conscious of the fact that the city should have more places where people can get away of the hustle and bustle of city life,” she said.

“If designed well, office lobbies and shopping mall atriums could become a new form of semi-public space.”

Saunders leads AIM Architecture alongside Vincent de Graaf. Other projects by the studio include the apothecary-style Harmay beauty store in Hong Kong and Ruff Well Water Resort in Sichuan.

Photography is by Wen Studio.

Project credits

Client: SHUI ON
Design principals: Wendy Saunders, Vincent de Graaf
Project manager: Cindy Xu
Project architect: Davide Signorato
Interior team: Mavis Li, Ning Cai
FFE Team: Peichin Lee

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