Angelos Floros

Published: Floros A., "Private House in Ano Liosia", DOMES International Review of Architecture / Greek Architecture Yearbook, 05/11, 2011, pp. 138-139

Exhibited: DOMES 2011 — Panorama of Greek Architecture, Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Chania

A private house in Ano Liosia, Attica, built around a courtyard.

The atrium is among the oldest devices in Greek and Mediterranean architecture, and here it does the whole of the work. The house divides into two volumes — one public, one private — joined by a lower single-storey volume between them, which holds the playroom, made for the couple's four children.

The public volume gathers around the courtyard, and every room has sight of it: living room, dining room, activity space, and a kitchen placed so that it oversees the living room and the playroom at once. Above the kitchen there is a small study; above the playroom, a private terrace.

The private volume stands opposite, on three levels. One sits below the entrance; the main bedroom is on the ground floor; the children's rooms take the whole of the first. The lower volume can later become an independent dwelling with its own entrance from the rear yard, and the covered outdoor space at that level works as a private courtyard.

Every door and window on the ground floor opens onto the atrium, which makes it the principal living space of the house rather than a void at its centre. The remaining elevations are almost blind towards the street and the urban fabric around them.

The house draws a hard line between private and public life, and gives its two volumes those exact names. It is an early version of the question I have been working on ever since — only here the line is made of concrete, and the technology has not arrived yet.