This housing complex stands at the edge of Thessaloniki, on a sloping plot directly below the listed Benouzilio silk mill – a landmark of the city’s industrial archaeology. Built in 1880 as part of a larger ceramic factory, the mill is both a physical and a symbolic anchor. The new complex enters into a productive dialogue with its neighbour, respecting its scale, material memory, and presence, while reinterpreting its language into contemporary housing.

The design consists of three distinct residential volumes, placed along the edges of the plot to frame the mill and open up a shared central courtyard. This configuration creates a collective space, where life unfolds between private thresholds and the cultural memory of the factory above. The buildings follow the natural slope, adapting their heights and profiles to echo the industrial structures nearby, while offering protected views of the city below.

The housing complex borrows from the material history of its listed counterpart utilizing ceramic tiles and mass produced components for windows, apertures, skylights and pergolas. Each building is wrapped in a concrete L-shaped element – a thick, protective line that shields the units and directs life inward and toward the courtyard. Beneath this protective frame, the ceramic cladded volumes break down into smaller, more intimate spaces, generating semi-outdoor terraces and sheltered corners for domestic life to spill outside. Planted roofs and new local species of plants within the courtyard stitch the project into the wider landscape, creating a habitat that is both ecological and social – a contemporary living environment grounded in the layered history of Pylaia.