“The Wave” residential building is adjacent to the Glyfada Golf Club from the east. The design process envisioned two interconnected volumes within one continuous structure parallel to the property’s longer side, in direct conversation with the natural characteristics of Place and the view.
The design process was driven by a careful manipulation of boundaries that define movements, pauses, and qualitative differences. The transitive way that natural light travels through the building mass, the views in the foreground and in the distance, and the seasonal transformation of the landscape, established a set of interactive relations that shaped the project’s architectural vocabulary. In response to the panoramic nature of the site, the inner structure demonstrates distinct, yet related viewing priorities and spatial roles. The organizational strategy opens a dialogue between the landscape and the building, articulating its interior into areas that range from communal to private, extroverted to introverted, day-to-day to impromptu, depending on the differentiations of both space and view. In this light, the building serves as a mediator between the user and the environment at the intersection of multiple narrative and analytical flows.
This emergent microcosm provides an intricate experience based on the dynamics between the man-made and the natural, the point of focus and the background, the familiar and the unknown, triggering sensations and emotions that capture the moment. Throughout this journey, experiences, spaces and materialities converge, either as parallel or as complimentary events. An earthy material and a non-material – marble and glass respectively – comprise the building’s envelope, describing a transition from the natural to the built. Their relationship is explored through a simple constructional approach, which accounts for matters of texture, color and response to light. These dynamic relationships strike a balance in a final form that seems to be in motion; a materialized highlight of the entire design process.