The grid house is about repetition and difference. A simple and regular concrete structural grid creates a variety of interior and exterior spaces with views across the Evoian Sea. The project is a full gut renovation of an existing modernist house that creates a 6 bedroom house tucked into the landscape, appearing modest from the entry but opening up its full width and height to the sea. At times the grid is infilled with brick to create enclosure and privacy. At other moments it contains full height wood-framed windows to orient views out into the garden and sea. In other locations the grid is left open, and creates exterior covered patios, balconies, and pergolas. The landscape is designed to wrap around the house and cascade in terraces down towards the sea.
Whereas the original house – designed by Greek architect Nikos Hadjimichalis in the 1970s – masked its underlying structural grid, the renovation reveals and celebrates this grid, emphasizing the variations in spaces and views possible on the site. A new pergola with a built-in seating area extends the original concrete structural grid into the landscape, conflating interior and exterior and blurring the edges of the existing rectangular massing. On the inside, a new staircase connects what used to be two separate independent houses, allowing for the private and public spaces of the house to be re-organized respectively into bedrooms on the lower floor and an open plan kitchen, living and dining room on the upper floor.
The house sits next to another 1970’s house designed by the same architect, and also recently renovated by Neiheiser Argyros. As such, the two houses share similar logics and can be thought of as siblings, both in their original DNA – exposed concrete and brick – but also in the way they’ve been redesigned. Many of the original modernist details have been recreated and updated, but also complemented with playful new additions such as a pink metal stair balustrade, custom built-in furniture, distinctive wood millwork, and galvanized metal grating.
