The project takes cues from architectural vernacular of the entire Mykonos Island, its white-washed white volumes and thick limestone bases and partition walls that make up this exotic island DNA that so fascinated and inspired Le Corbusier in his early travels. Despite the visual homogeneity that it produces in the landscape at first sight, this operating mantra of building code conceals a strong sense of architecture as not only different from but absolutely opposed to nature.

“A city is a large house and a house is a small city.” Organizationally and experientially but without nostalgia, the project aims to make the large residence feel like a Greek village: a collection of odd parts, small buildings and pavilions, that never quite cohere into one single whole. At the center of our strategy, is the need to add enough character and autonomy to each of the parts, both programmatically and problematically. At the same time, every part enjoys a relationship of figural adjacency with its neighboring one, so they can function independently and interdependently from each other. Connected either directly, through semi-covered trellises or simply contained outdoor spaces protected from the heavy wind, the meandering organization provides residents and guests with a choreographed sequence of spaces, a constant promenade where architecture frames as much itself as it does landscape and nature.  In this unique context, wherein material decisions are restricted to variations of white color, texture and stone composition, form, shape, outline and silhouette are paramount. Consequently, the new residence is an organically loose ensemble of limpid white volumes, crystalline masses and divagating terraces.

Conceptually, the project is a ‘fuzzy aggregate’, a series of autonomous parts not quite cohering into a whole but not entirely fragmentary either. This is not without ambiguity, since it implies a synthesis of disparate elements, sharing a degree of consistency in the combination that allows them to still be distinguished within the aggregate.
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Team:
Marcelo Spina
Georgina Huljich
Daniela Atencio
Adin Rimland
Junxi Peng

Partners:
Aegean Landmark