Stone Summer House

Stone Summer House

Thanos, Limnos, Greece / 2016 – 2022

Encounter, Stillness, Continuation, Transformation

Encounter, Stillness, Continuation, Transformation

The house is located in the small village of Thanos, 3.5 km away from the main town Myrina, on Limnos island. The island is part of the city state of Lesbos, which is comprised of a cluster of islands located in the north eastern region of the Aegean sea. Thanos village is classified by the municipalities and building authorities as a traditional vernacular setting whereby all new construction abides by a strict set of codes and rules which admittedly affect the overall appearance of all newly built form. For instance: clay tile four-sided hip roofs are mandatory and apertures (windows & doors) adhere to maximum widths of 1.20 meters wide with a 1:2 ratio proportioning system. The challenge here was to accept these limitations and to find gaps of opportunity within these constraints attempting at a provocative unexpected organizational order (albeit a new house/entity hinting at a unique sacred experience) fitted into the very fabric of a stereotypical envelope. The house is encountered at the terminus of the road and is entered through a mixed use hybrid space which functions as a carport/garage (when the premises are vacated), or simultaneously as a vestibule reception hall, a semi-outdoor space, and a lounge sitting space. The house plan is open, transparent in many ways, with clear coordinated alignments to the outside assigning peripatetic movement along with synchronized connections to the various programmed zones. Since generous expanses of glass are forbidden on the exterior shell they are introduced inside establishing continuity of space, thresholds, and fluidity of light, as experienced in the carport/vestibule area and glassed mezzanine bridge suspended within the void of the living room. The structure is of a reinforced concrete frame infilled perimetrically with an appointed thick stone wall assimilating the original authentic dwellings of time past. The materials employed are natural and celebrated in their built raw state, to authenticate the constructional process and to hopefully establish as far as possible a maintenance free house. Adornments and superficial embellishments are eliminated allowing the edifice, the spaces and the materials to declare themselves, and to assert their own unique properties. The house maintains an introspective, introverted bunker like blockhouse stance, freed from conceit, while connecting to and absorbing the context it is set in. The ground floor consists of an entrance multipurpose hybrid space, living room, kitchen/dining space and bathroom. The upper level contains two bedrooms, a bathroom, and ample closet space concealed or flanked behind a charcoal black surfaced retable wall delineating a sharp division of the private rooms from the open air and partially diaphanous mezzanine floor plates. The underground space comprising half the footprint of the house cares for the necessary storage, and a mechanical equipment area which services the house through a radiant floor heating system. To some extent the functions and circulation of the house push themselves to their proper limits and then let go for sensual optical reasons. Interactive slim tall windows or pillars of light command views of the village and the sea shore beyond. The abundance of natural light inside entering through the double height sitting area creates the sensation of residing in a semi-outdoor living space. An aperture resembling a skylight, (symbolically opening to the sky), punctures the roof plate anticipating future law change and extension of the living proper above, with an open air roof garden. The heavy austere stone volume, which is lifted lightly off of its concrete base debating gravity, announces at first glance a banal, generic, mainstream, familiar expression which slowly challenges your perception and gains abstraction through its relevance to reality. Sometimes the greater the reality the greater the abstraction as exemplified in some of the work of Warhol or the unfamiliar familiarity of Duchamp’s readymades. Perhaps the polarities between reality and abstraction teeter, nullify, oscillate, blur, and begin to coexist forming an inseparable unified edifice or common whole. Perception is a mother … Perception in all of its constancy, offers a flowing wavering state, susceptible to change, advance, and transformation.