Home > Magazine > Issues > #32 Mar/Apr 2010 > Student housing, Athens

Student housing, Athens

Student housing

ATHENS (GR) - João Prates Ruivo and Raquel Maria Oliveira redefine the traditional separation between the private and the communal domain.

At the end of January it was announced that '18 steps' by the Athens-based Portuguese duo, João Prates Ruivo & Raquel Maria Oliveira, had won UPTO35, an international architecture competition for architects up to 35 years of age, organized by Greek development company OLIAROS. The brief was to design an innovative typology for a student housing complex to be built in Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio, an area in the historical centre of Athens. The competition attracted a total of 242 entries from 41 countries. Five design teams made it through to the final round, after which the public was able to view the designs on the Internet and at an exhibition in Athens and vote for their favourite via SMS. The entries were judged by a seven-man jury, with the eighth vote going to the public's favourite.

The winners received €10,000 plus a €30,000 commission from OLIAROS to actually realize their design. All the more remarkable, therefore, that the jury should have voted for a rather conceptual design.

In '18 steps' the traditional separation between the private and the communal domain is redefined, on both the urban design and the architectural level. The complex composition, which conforms to the irregular shape of the given plot, results in a fine-meshed system of student units linked by stairs, landings, roof terraces and courtyard gardens. On the one hand these communal spaces act as the link between the building and life in the surrounding neighbourhood, on the other they constitute a world of their own in this somewhat secluded location.

In organizing the programme, the architects asked themselves the following question: 'How to design collective housing for the generation of individualized cyberspace?' Their solution was to eliminate the usual segregation by floors; in this building, although the eighteen residents have their own floor, they are connected to one another by way of the communal circulation/social spaces.

The tiny rooms are separated from the access gallery by a revolving wall unit so that whenever they feel like it, the students can extend their private domain into the communal. The wet areas are incorporated into the building's thick external wall, which allows for an open plan room layout while also producing unique balcony bathrooms (something that will need elaborating in the next stage, according to the jury report).

All in all, in choosing this particular design OLIAROS have well and truly fulfilled their ambition 'to embrace the principles of contemporary, innovative … architecture to create micro-environments that blend with and respect their natural and urban contexts, setting higher standards for contemporary living'. An exhibition of the competition entries is on show in the Benaki Museum in Athens from 24 March to 4 April 2010.