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Bridge House

Studio
1.

Mediating the distant view, the soft outlines of the mountains framing Athens recede in the horizon.

2.

Untitled, engravings by Marita Nikoloutsou. A concrete bridge captures the imagination of the architect and gives the necessary pretext for bands of lines to meet in the diagonal, as seen in perspective, from the down below. Similar origami-like endings are pursued fearlessly in the design of the house, as if foreshortenings were in effect. Even the roof was inclined so as to conform with local building regulations -laws that aspired to produce a more vernacular, roof tiled outline for the neighborhood.

3.
4.

El Lissitzky, Proun 19D (1920) and the initial model of the Bridge House. This kind of affinity was encouraged by the client when, upon our introduction meeting, he referred to graphic design and bold gestures within the plot.

5.

What is quite unique in this plot is that it is elevated like a gentle mound, flanked on its narrow sides by streets lying below, so access from either street is uphill. Designing this house meant a procedure of surgically removing ground so as to level the terrain at the highest point of the site and shield the house from the neighbor and the northern wind.

6.

Initial sketches explored vertical metal slats on both sides of the upper floor.

7.

“Almost weightless” such was the impression created by the wide staircase in Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center (1956) in Michigan. In his first work in America, the great Finnish-American architect had set his sails for a futuristic iconography (later to be followed by his masterpiece the convex and concave JFK Airport in New York City). As if to illustrate the weightlessness and blur structural demands, Saarinen made sure to land all vertical supporting rods in a shallow pond of water. The Bridge House’s staircase becomes a reorchestration of the Saarinen original, now outlined in a skewed perimeter.

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Bridge House

Status
Ongoing
Year
2020
Location
Attiki
Collaborators
Chaido Kaproulia

We had to design a house for a hill that was facing two roads, on its eastern and western side. These two features of the landscape became critical for the design proposal: we decided to keep intact the highest northern part of the hill –to retain it as a base from which the house extends horizontally. This becomes the first floor that extends to the south and acquires the character of a bridge: under it transverse walls undertake its support. These walls underline the character of the plot: in their parallel arrangement, they maintain the visual communication of east and west views. To be precise, they form interior zones of different character that the visitor traverses: initially an entrance zone with no furniture, an empty zone destined to solely frame the view. This zone borders on a thick wall, the “wall of fire” since on its back side it houses both the fireplace and the outdoor barbecue. The next main zone is that of the living areas –flanked by courtyards that extend beyond the outline of the first floor bridge. From there one enjoys the western view to Athens and the sea or the eastern view -through a planted courtyard- to the pedestrian access and the view of Rafina to the background. The third zone is a linear pool that apparently traverses the living space and the fourth is an earthy zone where the building clings to the excavated ground of the hill. These zones are covered by the bridge with the bedrooms of the house -protected by a retractable filter, these bedrooms have direct access to the planted hill.

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