ANDROS MAISONETTES

The project involved the design and construction of a complex of four maisonette units on the island of Andros, intended for operation as licensed tourist accommodation. The complex sits on an elevated hillside plot with unobstructed panoramic views over the Aegean — neighbouring islands dissolving into the horizon at golden hour. That view is not a backdrop. It is the architecture's primary material.

The massing responds to the terrain: four interlocking white volumes stepping across the slope, each unit carving out its own level, its own terrace, its own relationship to the sea. The Cycladic building code — whitewashed render, blue-framed joinery, flat roofs with timber pergolas, dry-stone boundary walls — provided the formal vocabulary. The design accepted it without resistance and worked within it precisely, so that the cluster reads as something that grew out of the hillside rather than was placed on it. Inside, the register shifts. Polished microcement floors, thick plastered walls with built-in niches, local stone used raw for the fireplace surround — natural materials throughout, chosen for texture over statement. The palette is warm and stripped back: sand, stone, and the dusty rose of rendered walls at dusk. The blue-framed windows frame the Aegean like paintings. At sunset, every room catches the light differently. That was not accidental.