{"id":683583,"date":"2026-01-09T02:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/683583\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T02:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T02:54:15","slug":"arid-layers-lightweight-volumes-atop-1950s-building-in-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/683583\/","title":{"rendered":"arid layers lightweight volumes atop 1950s building in athens"},"content":{"rendered":"

veil: a layered intervention in patissia\u2019s urban fabric<\/p>\n

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Arid reworks and extends a two-story corner building from 1951 in the Patissia district of Athens<\/strong><\/a> into a hybrid residential<\/strong><\/a>, co-living, and co-working<\/strong><\/a> building. The project, dubbed Veil, renovates the original fabric and adds three new floors above it, resulting in an 850-square-meter building that engages directly with its neighborhood\u2019s spatial logic.<\/p>\n

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The intervention<\/strong><\/a> is shaped by Karamanlaki Street\u2019s characteristic morphology, where setbacks generate \u2018prassies,\u2019 semi-open front gardens. These transitional spaces become a guiding principle for the new volume, which pulls back, carving out terraces and voids that preserve openness and visual continuity along the street. This restraint allows the building to sit comfortably within its context, maintaining lightness despite its increased height.<\/p>\n

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The architects integrate contemporary elements into the existing structure, with its marble<\/strong><\/a> surfaces, wooden<\/a> <\/strong>floors, and timber window frames. The added volume above introduces perforated aluminum<\/strong><\/a> panels that wrap the facade<\/strong><\/a>, softening the mass and blurring its edges, creating a layered composition where structure and surface, concealment and exposure become one.<\/p>\n

\"layered
all images by Giorgos Sfakianakis<\/a>, Giorgos Kordakis<\/a><\/p>\n

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arid reworks the polykatoikia as a shared living model<\/p>\n

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The Athens-based team<\/strong><\/a> at Arid improves ventilation and privacy with a double-skin facade system that allows light to filter and reflect in constantly changing ways. Movable louvers and rotating panels regulate daylight, producing shifting transparencies and a kinetic quality. As the sun moves, the appearance of Veil changes, transforming the upper floors into an almost immaterial presence hovering above the older base.<\/p>\n

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Programmatically, the project rethinks the social model of the Athenian polykatoikia. Alongside a range of residential units, the building incorporates coworking spaces, a shared coliving apartment, and a communal roof garden. These shared areas extend the idea of collective urban living, updating it for contemporary patterns of work and habitation while remaining rooted in Athens\u2019 long tradition of dense, mixed-use residential life.<\/p>\n

\"layered
the renovated 1950s corner building in Patissia<\/p>\n

\"layered
the project embedded within patissia\u2019s dense residential fabric<\/p>\n

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perforated aluminum panels filter light across the facade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"veil: a layered intervention in patissia\u2019s urban fabric \u00a0 Arid reworks and extends a two-story corner building from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[56145,4021,4020,4022,77,20185,14813,17022,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-683583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architecture-in-greece","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-facades","14":"tag-renovation-and-restoration-architecture-and-design","15":"tag-residential-architecture-and-interiors","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115862887835663310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}