Free ground floor

The city has systematically replaced the presence of nature with the basic unit of development; the block of apartments, from where it is feasible to observe, only in the upper levels, the limit where the inorganic development ends and the organic forms begin to predominate.49 Simultaneously, at the ground floor, the possibility of linking natural elements in the space experience is canceled. Under this guideline, the Irododu Attikou block and the Psychiko block add another significant category, considering that the architect transforms this limitation into a field of action to artificially recreate nature. The ground floor of these buildings shows the architect’s interest in recovering the active presence of the landscape, when making the transition between the building and the street.

This strategy for landscape restoration admits minimal contact with the ground; through the nucleus that encloses the staircase and the elevator, as well as the supporting structure that is deposited and reflected in a body of water. In both projects, the arrangement and relationship of these components in the system are quite distant, that is, their spatial structure varies according to the physical conditions of their immediate surroundings. On the one hand, the building in Psychiko is composed of a prism located in the middle of the plot, removing its four sides from the edge. The symmetrical arrangement also corresponds to the spatial structure and implies a certain statism inside the apart-

(Right) Fig 89. Psichiko apartment building ground floor photo, taken from ‘Takis Zenetos 1926,977, Ορέστης Β Δουμανης, ‘World Architecture 4, London Magazine’.

49. PAPADOPOULOS Spiros, Transfiguraciones, notas sobre el paisaje del Ática en el cine, pág 95.

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ments. On the other hand, the disposition of the Irodou Attikou in the corner, allows discovering three of its facades, its careful disposition of each stroke, evidences a consistent development of the oblique tension.

(Right) Fig 91. Psychiko apartment building photo, taken from ‘Takis Zenetos 1926,-977, Ορέστης Β Δουμανης, ‘World Architecture 4, London Magazine’. As they rise from the ground, both buildings, develop a natural mi- (Next page) crocosm on the ground floor,50 that enriches the sensorial experience of the architectural space, as well as they manage to easily esFig 92. Irodou Attikou apartment building photo, ibidem. cape the chaos of the street and the urban dynamics. The architect Fig. 93 Irodou Attikou apartment building, invests the notion of continuity with the street, initially posed by the ground floor photo, taken from www.ll-assofree floor building, 7 for an intimate space that shuns the crowd. This ciates.gr way of facing the transition between urban and domestic world. 50. “A transition between two spaces of com-

pletely different scales is established. While the garden has a roof over the sky, the covered garden is covered with the slab of the terrace floor. (...) this artificially built scale has nothing to do next to the natural scale of the landscape to which it is integrated” QUETGLAS Josep, Anuario de estudios Lecorbuserianos, Massilia 2003, page 75.

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