This 1960s Home Feels Contemporary Thanks to a Pastel Pink Staircase

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Project Details:  

Location: Athens, Greece

Architect: Cometa Architects / @cometa_architects

Footprint: 1,615 square feet 

Builder: Tsalikidis Constructions Ltd

Photographer: Giorgos Sfakianakis / @g_sfakianakis

From the Architect: "The house is a volumetric exercise of solid faces and punctual openings, nestled in a corner of a residential neighborhood with diverse housing typologies and varying heights. The decision to keep a low raising building with a garden in a dense urban context is an exercise that’s achieves minimum impact of the new and reuse of the structural core of the old.

"This 1960s house has donated its solid concrete structure, its foundations along with the footprint to this new built. Portions of the slabs are cut to create double-height spaces, and a new steel structure is added on top, connected to the foundations and reinforced for the region's high seismic activity. 

"The surrounding buildings to the northwest and southwest rise high with large balconies that compromise the privacy of the house. In response, the house becomes an opaque volume. To introduce light, the volume is cut at its west vertex, creating an exterior oasis at the intersection of two streets where distance to the building opposite is greater, also disrupted by tall trees.

"The interior layout of the new volume revolves around this double-height space housing the staircase connecting the living area and kitchen with the bedrooms and a studio topped by a skylight that provides intense diffuse light to the entire house in the mornings. The living area and kitchen open to the garden, which unfolds on three levels. During construction, care was taken to preserve the original fruit trees, and new ones were added along with Mediterranean vegetation to provide freshness during the hot days in the city of Athens.

"The residence is equipped with a comprehensive and autonomous energy system for domestic hot water and air conditioning, featuring radiant and cooling floor systems and fan coils through aerothermal technology. The system is powered by solar collectors and photovoltaic panels installed on the new flat roof."