LOCATION YEAR TYPE STATUS SIZE AIDIPSOS 2024 HOSPITALITY ASSIGNMENT 4.500 sqm EVIA
HEAD ARCHITECT DESIGN TEAM ZAPANTIOTIS FOTIS ZAPANTIOTIS FOTIS ZARANI ALEXANDRA AGAPAKI MARIA
The study concerns the construction of a mixed-use accommodation project, as it is designed to incorporate both hospitality and small-scale artisanal production units.
It is developed on a hillside in northern Evia, where the rugged terrain, aromatic herbs, and the rich olive grove organically running through the site, create an authentic Mediterranean landscape.
The project seeks to introduce an experiential approach to hospitality, offering a holistic experience that combines accommodation, food culture and participation in the primary production process. Around the accommodation units, small artisanal production facilities—such as pasta making, chocolate production, baking, and brewing—are not isolated structures but integral parts of the overall experience. Production and consumption become sensory experiences, embedded in memory, where visitors are not merely spectators but active participants in a cycle that connects them meaningfully with nature and the land that nourish them.
The architectural program combines shared hospitality buildings (reception, restaurant-bar, swimming pool, spa) with small-scale artisanal production facilities—including a bakery, pasta workshop, chocolate production, cosmetics lab, olive mill, and brewery.
Entry is from the lowest point of the slope, and the design unfolds as a spatial narrative of ascent. The terrain dictates the rhythm, and the buildings are arranged in a way that follows the natural spiral movement leading gradually to the hilltop.
The scent of freshly baked bread from the bakery chimney guides visitors toward the reception, which opens onto a large, two-level central square. Positioned at the heart of the project, the square emerges as a communal meeting and interaction space, serving as a threshold between public and private areas. Around it, the production units and workshops are integrated, creating a sense of continuous flow and engagement, where visitors actively participate in the creative process.
The transition into the more private areas of the accommodation follows a natural sequence, with privacy increasing as one ascends toward the highest point of the hill. Here, the strategically placed lodging spaces offer seclusion and panoramic views of the landscape. The way one moves, listens, touches, smells, and tastes—all are designed to intensify the feeling of an immersive experience and a gradual discovery of space.
The central concept revolves around highlighting the unique terrain of the area, translating and reinterpreting this natural foundation into a composition where the visitor does not simply experience a place but becomes a part of it.
Mapping the countless paths through the mountain and structuring the resulting topography was our first approach to understanding the project. The architectural perception of the mountain is not merely about the folding of the land’s surface but equally about the network of movements it imposes and defines. The terrain compels movement, movement leaves a trace—a path—and the landscape takes form, reflecting the patterns of these pathways.
Ascent within the landscape is never linear. The body follows a movement reminiscent of an animal’s natural path—a spiral climb, where the route adapts to the topography. This journey within the project becomes an experience of constant alternation—between light and shadow, movement and pause, the narrowness of a path and the openness of a square. Together with the dry-stone retaining walls, the spiraling movements and resting points shape open, fluid spaces capable of accommodating the architectural program.
The buildings are expressed through fundamental geometries—square, circle, straight line—archetypal forms that resonate with collective memory. Their surfaces remain bare, and materials such as concrete blocks, exposed concrete, stone, and metal create an architecture that evolves naturally over time and within the landscape.
Concrete blocks, a humble industrial material, were chosen as a core structural element, used both for load-bearing walls and non-load-bearing partitions. Their raw texture is left exposed, not concealed or beautified, but instead engaging in a dialogue with a tradition of construction built with honesty and without excess.
Above these robust concrete bases, lightweight metal and glass structures form spaces and shape a vocabulary inspired by the anonymous, vernacular structures once crafted by farmers—stables, small workshops, and artisanal spaces.
Thin metal roofs, seemingly floating above the hillside, create a dialogue between interior and exterior, between the grounded solidity of the base and the lightness of the shell. This contrast between the massive and the light, the permanent and the ephemeral, the earthy and the floating, is a conscious architectural choice that reflects the raw craftsmanship of rural and industrial memory—an architecture born from necessity, material economy, availability, and the philosophy of hands that build without pretension.
