Siemens residence

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Fig 30. RUBIO Laura, Digital Photomontage - Siemens residence.

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“Walls with doors and windows make a house, but what really makes a house, is its internal space; that is why we say: the material has utility, the immaterial, essence”21

Nea Kiffisia, is one of the suburbs located in the lower part of Mount Parthina that make up the rugged north of Athens. The morphological condition of the territory gives rise to a winding road, to which irregular blocks are linked. Large residences, isolated one from each other are located there, where the view can cover the dense urban fabric to the horizontal line of the Ionian Sea.

The sloped topography of the property, conditions the elevation of the house on a plinth, a piece that, beyond that making possible the regularization of the rugged terrain, also makes a possible raise to a continuous base plane on which the domestic world develops, protecting its privacy with regard to the immediate environment, and widening the visual field from the inside.

The architectural ensemble assumes the irregular geometry of the terrain, composed of four sides, three of them surrounded by a road, with which the house remains parallel and, the other one adjoins of the neighboring residence. The three axes given by the road, are articulated among themselves insisting on the form of the property; frame in

(Right) Fig 31. ZENETOS Takis, Main entrance facade plan, taken from ‘Takis Zenetos 1926,-977, Ορέστης Β Δουμανης, ‘World Architecture 4, London Magazine’

Fig 32. Photo entrance facade, ibidem.

21. ARGAN Giulio Carlos, Walter Gropius y la Bauhaus, Cap 6.

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which the volumetric segregation of three bodies takes place, corresponding to the service area, a single main room and a large social room.

As long as the tripartite articulation is achieved, the volumes rotate around the vestibule; an essential piece of the system, which lacks, in itself, of material consistency, but allows internal cohesion of the ensemble. Thus, the space runs in a centrifugal way, tensioning towards the terrace, carrying out formal operations that dilute the mass, while the view is attracted by the suggestive landscape.

In that sense, the spatial structure is not only the result of an intense reflection of the development of domestic life in relation of its physical context, but also, a study of spatial relationships based on the diagonal, the movement in perspective and oblique tension of the pieces, 22 both with the outside and between them, thus canceling out the possibility of incising in a static space, as well as the idea of a prismatic container, by methodically avoiding the joint in the corner of two pieces in right angle.

The domestic dynamic and the open form seek its correspondence only with the distant landscape, but not with its surrounding urban context. Since the entrance façade delimits with the street with a rigid wall, on the contrary, in the southeast façade, the decomposition of the elements is carried out in different planes of diverse material-

(Right) Fig 33. ZENETOS Takis, Siemens residence Architectural plan, taken from ‘Takis Zenetos 1926,-977, Ορέστης Β Δουμανης, ‘World Architecture 4, London Magazine’

22. ““(...) the three dimensions are incorporated together to cancel the heavy curvature and make it the bottom and horizon of a pure delineation of empty volumes (...) And then this aspiration to dematerialize the This way, to contradict it in the absolute equivalence of positive and negative values, to prevent it from being constituted as a physical thing in space, is translated in the individualization of a point of transit from the stasis to the movement, in the rupture of the equilibrium system, in the unlimited prolongation of bays along the horizon and verticals (...) the rigorous and meditated combination of the surfaces does not aim at any other objective than to destroy the surface and destroy the plane, as mere geometric entity, its absolute and absolute value of spatial place” ARGAN Giulio Carlos, Walter Gropius y la Bauhaus, page 109.

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ity, combining glazed pieces, and opaque tilting elements, covered by an eave, in a treatment similar to a three-dimensional machine. This mechanical system of enclosure, which gradually attenuates heat and sunlight, is articulated in such a way that the elements participate in a visual gear, corresponding a technical resolution, typical of a mechanical engineer, with an operation of compositional category.23

This is how the box is broken,24 previously from its spatial structure, freeing the system from the compartmentalization, and then, abolishing the façade from its delimiting condition, by establishing a porous structure that dilutes the limits of the constructed and it makes feasible the indissoluble link between interior and exterior, to melt house and landscape in a single entity.

(Right) Fig 34. ZENETOS Takis, Facade mechanism study, taken from ‘Takis Zenetos 1926,-977, Ορέστης Β Δουμανης, ‘World Architecture 4, London Magazine’

(Next page) Fig 35 and 36. ZENETOS Takis, Architectural section plan, ibidem.

Fig 37. East facace photo, ibidem.

23. LLANOS Isabel, Casas O&V años 50, pág 376, 377.

24. “(...) I widened the mass of the building as much as I could, to give it more space. But the walls of the house stopped at the height of the windowsills of the second floor, to allow the rooms to have a series of continuous windows running under the broad eaves, ligneously inclined and cantilevered. In this new house, the enclosure was beginning to not be an impediment to outside light, air and beauty. The walls that surround the box, to which holes have been opened, had until now been the great problem (...).” WRIGHT Frank Lloyd, Autobiografía, Madrid, el croquis, págs 177 y 178.

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PLAKIAS MASTER PLAN

CRETE, GREECE, 1966

Fig 36. RUBIO Laura, Siemens residence location plan, (South of Crete).