C Paraschos Architectural & Integrated Environmental Design - Construction

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7 floor apartment building on pilotis
7 floor apartment building on pilotis
7 floor apartment building on pilotis

7 floor apartment building on pilotis

Orfanidou street, Athens

Design period: 03/2003 – 07/2003
Construction period: 07/2003 – 07/2004
Site area: 207, 45 m²
Total floor area: 640, 89 m²
Total volume: 2.405, 78 m³
Proprietary status:  building owned and sold by our architectural practice

This apartment building is located at
Kypriadou, an Athens area designed on the
principals of a ‘garden city’. It has
seven floors and consists of six apartments,
three of 85,00 m² and three of 130, 00 m².
The location is considered
desirable because of the three squares that
are located around the property providing an
unhindered view, its location is
considered privileged. A disadvantage,

however, is the fact that pedestrians
walking along the axis which is created by
the building and the squares, have a view
into the apartments up to the fourth floor,
(the frontage of each apartment consists of
one large glass door leading to the
balcony). This was overcome by using
concrete parapets up to the fourth floor
balcony and tempered glass for the rest of
the balconies. The organisation of the

parapets creates a vertical perforated free
hanging ‘skin’ of reinforced concrete,
painted white;  the impression is given
that it is suspended seemingly not meeting
the rest of the building although it is
cantilevered from the ‘body’ of the
building. The balcony openings were formed
on this floating ‘skin’. In this way, we
unified the facade of the building in one
sculptured piece, giving a sense of scale

between the building and the large open
space in front of it, differentiating it
from the usual floor stacking so commonly
seen in the Athens cityscape.
Given the unobstructed view, the living
rooms were set along the face of the
building and the bedrooms situated at the
back. The site is only 9,00 m wide,
making it difficult to provide three
bedrooms to the larger apartments (3rd, 4th

and 6th floor) in addition to the
stairwell, all at the rear of the
building. We could only fit two bedrooms
and the stairwell, each one measuring three
meters wide. We overcame this problem by
laying out the bedrooms at a split-level
of an altitude of 1,50 m above and below
the living rooms. Thus, the two apartments
of the third and fourth floor share a common
level at the back, hence “locking” with

each other, each property having two bedrooms
at one level and one at the other. At the
same time, by constructing different
levels in each apartment, the natural cross
ventilation was amplified.





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