Courtyard House - Fatura

DRW

Commission

NEA SKIONI, HALKIDIKI, GREECE

Courtyard House

Design of a summer house for an extended family.
(ONGOING)

The house is located outside the coastal village of Nea Skioni in Halkidiki, in a plot facing the south-east and the nearby sea.

The brief asked for the design of a holiday house for a family of 4, which could cover their current and possible future needs of an older couple with 2 adult kids. All interior and exterior spaces of the house are inscribed within a square outline (17x17m). This outline is delimited by a wall, the porosity of which changes as the wall folds around the volume, and which organises and protects the life inside. The overall composition is organised by an extruded central cross; a gesture that achieves the spatial autonomy of the 3 separate living units. At the same time, this cross forms the connecting element of all the archetypal outdoor and semi-outdoor spaces that, in turn, are created by subtracting volumes from the initial solid. There are three distinct courtyards, which refer and organise the open air life of the house. All living units have distinct entrances and refer to these open spaces that provide the autonomy and privacy desired by the members of the family and their potential guests. The large pergola is conceived as a continuation of the pitched roof of the ‘tower’ and outlines a pleasant space of viewing and relaxation during the summer months.

The materials of the building were determined based on their low-cost and simple construction, low-energy consumption and sustainable behaviour. All exterior walls are covered with a coarse, lightly coloured plaster, while all lighter partitions, frames and shading elements are made out of aluminium. Colour is used in specific details and micro-corners of the house, highlighting activities such as bathing, inside and outside of the house.

Team

Elisavet Hasa

Platon Issaias

Theodossis Issaias

Giannantonis Moutsatsos

Alexandra Vougia

Collaborators

Clinton Thedyardi Prawirodiharjo / Architect

Myrto Vravosinou / Architect

George Kapetanos / Civil Engineer (RC-DC)

Kostas Kapesidis, Nikolaos Mertzios / Mechanical Engineers (EMDC)

Categories

Architecture, Domesticity

About

Fatura Collaborative – Research & Design Practice, was founded in 2009 and is developing projects across a wide range of scales, from intimate objects and performance, to architecture, urban design and planning. We are interested in architecture as social infrastructure, in developing collective equipments, in the design of spaces of care, empathy and welfare. We design and research expanding new problematics about ecology, the domestic, everyday life and the city.

Members

ELISAVET HASA
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher and educator based in London. She holds a diploma in architecture from the School of Architecture of the University of Patras, Greece (2015) and was awarded a PhD from the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (2022). Her thesis dealt with the materiality of grassroots, ad hoc and mutual aid projects by social movements in Europe and the United States, with an emphasis on their relationship with the state. She is teaching in undergraduate architectural design studios and history and theory courses at the London South Bank University and Central Saint Martins. She is also a registered architect in the UK (ARB) and Greece (TCG) and has practiced architecture in London, Madrid and Athens.

PLATON ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher, and educator. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds an MSc from Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft and The City as a Project research collective. He is Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the co-Head of Projective Cities MPhil programme at the Architectural Association, where he is also teaching Diploma Unit 7 with Georgia Hablützel and Hamed Khosravi. His research interests explore urban design and architecture in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and labour struggles. He has written and lectured extensively about Greek urbanisation and the politics of urban development.

THEODOSSIS ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

(he/him) is an architect and educator. He serves as Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, at Carnegie
Museum of Art and Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. He studied
architecture in Athens, Greece, and holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on architecture at the intersection of
human rights, conflict, and the provision of shelter. This interest led to his PhD dissertation
“Architectures of the Humanitarian Front” (2021, Yale University), which examined a period
around WWI when conflict, displacement, and territorial insecurity provoked the reconfiguration
of humanitarian operations –their spatial organization and ethical imperatives.

GIANNANTONIS MOUTSATSOS
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Lund, Sweden. He graduated in 2010 from the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens and holds an MSc in Energy Efficient and Environmental Building Design from the School of Architecture of Lund University (2015). He has practiced architecture as a freelance architect in Greece and currently in Sweden (eg. Tengbom architects), where he works on a wide range of projects including small houses, larger residential complexes as well as care, educational and industrial facilities.

ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
ARCHITECT

is an architect and an educator. She graduated in 2007 from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds the MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from GSAPP, Columbia University (2008) and a PhD from the Architectural Association – School of Architecture, London (2016). She is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has previously taught at the Architectural Association and the University of Westminster and practiced as an architect in New York and Athens.

MYRTO VRAVOSINOU
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Thessaloniki. She graduated from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015 and holds an MSc in Environmental Architectural and Urban Design from the same institution (2023). Since 2017, she has been collaborating with a group of freelance engineers, working on a variety of residential, workspace, and small-scale digital fabrication projects. Her special interests lie in urban and architectural design practices that promote spatial justice.