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BUILDING
 
 
Mirage
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DESIGNER
 
 
Kois Associated Architects
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CONTEXT
 
Relationship with the location
Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, GreeceThis project’s essential aim is to illustrate the Greek Cycladic aura and its magic. All materials - most of them extracted from local sources - were strategically used to make the house ‘disappear’ into the existing topography. This ‘cave’ like house establishes a continuous dialogue with the landscape, in an effort to highlight how less is actually more.
Location
Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, Greece
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DESCRIPTION
 
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Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, GreeceThe Mirage project is a poetic effort to reconcile nature and architecture. It concerns an island house with a unique design intention. A residence fused with its surroundings, which not only documents and highlights the region’s identity, but also acts as an illusion of the natural environment, an almost invisible construction camouflaged under a water tank. It is an experimental intervention on the island landscape, with the pure intention of leaving it almost intact, due to an implemented design strategy and a targeted selection of building materials. Also known as the ‘Island of Madonna’, Tinos has a rich theological history and is the third largest island of the Cyclades complex. Within its rocky landscape more than 40 villages and more than a thousand churches can be found, lit under the Greek sky, scattered across the hilltops like fragments of ancient ruins. The scenery is lined by thousands of kilometers of drystone walls, as if embroidered on the rocks, which complete a unique landscape.

Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, GreeceThe residence is situated on a steep sloped rocky plot overlooking the Aegean Sea. The design’s main essential was not only to integrate the volume of the house into the rocky island landscape, but mainly to investigate the boundaries between built and natural environment, always keeping in mind the basic Cycladic architecture elements of functionality and simplicity, not nevertheless neglecting aesthetics.

The house consists of a single-level structure. A linear wall, resembling the characteristic drystone walls of the island, runs from the outside to the inside of the house and separates the public from the private section of the house, also acting as a boundary of the territory.

Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, GreeceOn top of the residence overlays a rimless infinity pool, merging with the seascape and the Greek sky, thus providing an illusion inspired by the optical phenomenon of “mirage”. The presence of the house is revealed only through the mirror-effect surface of the pool, keeping the rest of the property camouflaged.

Sliding glasses blur the limiting boundaries between inside and outside, inviting light and movement and transforming the living experience. Controlled with a turnable corner system, the glass panels can be stored in a designated area, thus transforming the living room into an open-air observatory.

Quote from Stelios Kois: Reflecting nature is the only way to integrate in it.
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Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, Greece
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VIDEO
 
 

Kois Associated Architects - MIRAGE from Kois Associated Architects on Vimeo.

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MATERIALS
 
reinforced concrete, glass, water

Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, GreeceReinforced rammed earth walls become the bearing structure of the house. Twelve concrete columns are positioned at the living room, to support the pool while at the same time making it appear as an independent floating volume.

The structural walls are constructed by a reinforced earth and cement mixture, poured and compacted into a mold. The inner walls have a white screed cement finish, allowing the metamorphosis of this ‘cave’ house through the reflection of light.

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ECO-SUSTAINABILITY
 
The pool, acting as a roof, provides thermal insulation and protection from solar radiation and heat transmittance. Cool sea breezes penetrate the house pushing warm air out, thus achieving natural ventilation.
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LOCATION
 
Continent
Europe
Nation
Greece [Hellas]
Region
South Aegean [Nótio Egeo]
Regional district
Thira (Santorini)
Town
Thira (Santorini)
 
 
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MAP
 
 
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TYPOLOGY
 
ARCHITECTURE
Residential buildings
Detached, semi-detached houses and villas
Holiday buildings
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CHRONOLOGY
 
Realisation
2013
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AWARDS
 
2016
American Architecture Prize
Bronze in Landscape Architecture / Residential_LA
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DIMENSIONAL
DATA
 
Surface
sq.m. 198
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STAFF
 
Principal-in-charge
Kois Stelios
Project leader
Patsiaouras Nikos
Design team
Manolas Filippos, Giannakis Konstantinos, Karanasos Konstantinos, Voutsina Antriana, Stavrou Marielina, Ntoufexi Andromachi, Papargiri Vasiliki
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CREDITS
 
 
Photos © Kois Associated Architects
Drawings © Kois Associated Architects
Text edited by Kois Associated Architects
Courtesy of Kois Associated Architects | v2com

Kois Associated Architects, Stelios Kois, Mirage, Cyclades, Santorini, Aegean Sea, Greece



If you haven't already clicked on the photo strip at the top of the page, for the gallery of photos [7 images] and drawings [8 images], enter here
 
 
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