“If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her.” Oddyseas Elytis
Textures, honest materials, earthly colours are put together in clean lines & cubic shapes, in order to serve simplicity and practicality under a ruthless but rear light that brings all the above into life.
Growing up in a country like Greece leaves you few chances to escape for the definite of its landscape and teaches your subconscious to keep only the necessary, ensure that your design conforms with the surroundings and lets nature in. The cubic shapes, the small openings of the cycladic architecture, the linearity of the stones of the roofs of the north mainland are the past, the inheritance. You meet them again and again through your designing journey, under more sophisticated terms, described as influential factors in the development of modern architecture. You realize that other countries end up with similar shapes for completely different reasons. One thing is in common, you find yourself comfortable in them and when grab your pencil to sketch your idea, you often wonder around them. That is the beauty of architecture, the roots of the past in their different interpretation, feed the present, set up a new vocabulary to shape it, only hoping it will survive the future.
New Acropolis Museum, B. Tschumi
photo © A. Troupioti