Residences on Kassaveti Street in Kifisia
Client: Private Citizen
Area: 625,50 sq.m.
Location & Year: Kassaveti Str. , Kifissia,
Photo Credits: Konstantinos Kontos
Tags: Architecture design, interior design
In Kassaveti Street and in several of the surrounding streets, the special architectural style of Kifissia has been preserved, which is due to the old mansions and villas, as well as the existence of rich greenery.
The aim of the architectural team was to use as a starting point of the composition some of the dominant architectural elements of the area, such as the three arches, the portico, the gabled roof and the narrow high openings, and to compose them together with new ones, in order to cover the modern needs of three independent houses. Modern materials, such as glass and colored coatings, converse – in the context of the relationship between the old and the new – with stone and wood.
An important challenge was the desire of the owner for the complex of three houses not to refer to typical forms of apartment building but to have more the characteristics of an urban house. For this reason, an attempt was made to functionally solve the complex in a volume, which consists of two parts: the high body with the gabled roof that receives the main entrance and the staircase, which correspond to the house on the first floor and the attic and the lower horizontal element, which is accentuated by the three arches, and corresponds to the two ground floor houses.
The three arches are detached from the rest of the building, thus creating a curtain, a mask, of the building towards the street and offering a sense of greater privacy and protection in the spaces behind.
The three houses have independent access. The two ground floors have their entrance at the eastern and western border respectively, with access to the garden and extend on two levels. The third has its entrance from the meridian side (Kassaveti street) through the high volume, which functions as an internal staircase. This staircase allows independent access to the upper level, to the attic, offering the flexibility of its use as an autonomous or as a supplementary residence.
On the lower level are the auxiliary areas of the houses. A special effort was made to preserve the large plane trees of the area and to discreetly complete the planting of the surrounding area.