floating concrete
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client : private

location: Athens, Greece

architectural design: archivirus

date: 2008  

 

archivirus was asked to transform a 180 sq.m. basement into a private photography studio. A construction back to the 70’s, with bare concrete columns and beams to dominate the whole space. Raw aesthetics in contradiction with the neat backgrounds a photographer would seek for. The main request was an open space as brighter as possible, consisting of a photography studio, an office, a make-up room, a kitchen and two bathrooms. The basic concept idea was a space which would be transformed easily depending on the various circumstances of the photography scene. Keeping in mind the neat character the place should adopt but being at the same time charmed by the raw structural elements, I tried to let them float in a harmonious way into a totally white space. The photography studio is isolated with sliding panels from the main area, placed at the back side of the basement and adopted a totally clean character by being painted whole white including the floor. The white color of the floor dominates the whole space of the basement while suddenly concrete columns emerge on a vertical axis from the white floor to continue horizontally (beams) on the ceiling and through the space and finally lower down to become stands and kitchen-bathroom counters. A concrete surface floats into the white space and serves several basic functions. Following a certain route ends up to punch a semi-transparent glass cube constructed of glass brick and placed in a central point at the basement. This clear volume has a dual function serving as a make-up room and at the same time as a discrete division of the space into an office to the one side and a kitchen to the other, allowing the light coming from a big opening behind, to spread through the space. The inspiration for the design of the entrance came from the “dark room”, which is related to every photographer. A black box with the one end at the upper level of the road and the other at the lower level of the basement, serves as the main entrance with the staircase to integrate into it. The outline of the box is replaced with black vertical louvers creating a game of shadows and outlines when somebody enters the place thus leaving his impression.