One building, 6 walls without windows, a neighborhood of refugee low-rise homes and the everyday living of neighbors around their backyards. These were the facts about integrating a new home into a shell with particular requirements. This old building, located in a suburban neighborhood, was used as a traditional carpenter's workshop and had undergone several interventions in the past. The primary concern of our proposal was to transform it into a modern house, in a way so as to preserve its original character. Its limited size as well as the absence of natural lighting on the inside were two important issues in the architectural composition of the residence.
The main building originally had an area of 65,00sqm. A loft of 16,00sqm was added inside, while an external construction of 19,00sqm used as a warehouse was attached on the outside. Regarding the layout, the main space of the building serves the everyday living areas: the living room, the kitchen and the dining room, while extensive renovations have been made to create a guest house, a small bedroom on the loft and the master bedroom on the annex. Adding more functional areas of the building resulted from the needs of the couple who would reside in it. We took advantage of its large interior height and created the loft as well as the inner staircase of the new section at a higher level. The excessive use of the interior height completely changed the perspective of the building space as multiple viewing opportunities were provided, both near ground level and near ceiling level, thus enhancing the experience of perception of the outside space through the unique glass surface that divides the interior from the existing patio. This patio is actually an inner courtyard between neighboring houses.
The creation of transparent and semi-transparent glass surfaces brought natural light throughout the day. The building retained its character by the careful selection of new materials and the reuse of the old ones. These new materials do not interfere with the old aesthetic of the building, making the interior atmosphere as warm as possible for the family living there.
Elephant design also curated the selection of artworks, as it was the wish of the owners to have a space well-aesthetically and architecturally designed.