GLYFADA LOFT I

A 1980s apartment on the Athens Riviera. Forty years of accumulated compromises, outdated systems, and a structure that had quietly stopped performing. The brief was simple: start over. The apartment was stripped to bare concrete — every system pulled out, every surface removed — and rebuilt from scratch as an architectural office. Not renovated. Rebuilt. New electrical, new plumbing, new screeds, new plasters. The shell remained; everything else is new construction.

Structural masonry was kept wherever possible, drywalling reduced to the minimum. The building can take weight, take fixings, take use — the way buildings used to. Flooring is large-format granite throughout. Joinery is thermally broken aluminium, oversized and double-glazed. Every door is security-grade. No laminate, no shortcuts, no materials chosen for their price tag. Heating was a deliberate decision rather than a default. The Riviera offers two cold months a year — no more. Underfloor heating and heat pumps were considered and set aside: the cost was real, the use would have been marginal. A gas boiler delivers instant hot water, no pre-heating, no ceremony. The right system for the actual climate.

The result is a building that performs at least four energy classes above where it started — the compound effect of new insulation, new joinery, and the elimination of four decades of thermal failure. What was tired is now tight. What was dated is now precise. The neighbourhood hasn't changed. The building has.