The Antoniou residence

Development on the island can be described as a patchwork of  massive land consumption with dispersed planning that leads to a plethora of ugly and horrible buildings that do not facilitate urban life , mainly focused in tourist hotel complexes for holiday-makers. With the Turkish invasion back in 1974 and the massive population displacement, a large necessity to house these people was created. The lack on behalf of the government to plan on a bigger scale, ie master plan the whole island to be able to control the booming construction in the early 1980's lead to a more vast destruction of the urban and suburban areas. Social housing is restricted only of blocks of bad refugee low rise housing which leads to social and urban segregation.   

The plot is located in a sub-urban area of Paphos town . These areas consist of plots usually 22X24M and it is the result of a fixed , anachronistic legislation for years . This has resulted in a sub-urban development of houses allowing hardly any green areas due to another part of the legislation that allows buildings to reach 3M from the neighboring boundaries.

With the modern family being more demanding these houses are covering the full percentage of building factors, allowing less and less free space.

Bearing this in mind and also having the neighboring properties occupied , our aim was to design a house that allows the occupants max. privacy , sun protection and if possible more free space. The latter was not achieved due to the addition of a pool. So we have proposed  some vertical vegetation screens which create shading and privacy.

The house , despite it's contemporary lines  has a lot of "hidden" Cypriot  traditional elements such as tall ceilings, to facilitate air circulation, lightweight floor construction , to create flexibility, a massive ground floor structure, to create anti-seismic stability, a loggia to protect the high glass sliding doors with aluminium louvers the control the intensity of sunlight.

The house is closed towards the road , with hardly any openings .Most  of  the openings are oriented south east , towards the exterior areas, the patio and the pool , facing the  vegetal screen. Likewise, we have  achieved cool interior spaces through various types of screening filtration of the sunlight and, by allowing the air conditioning to function only when it is very humid, we managed to cool down the volumes with the help of heavy exterior insulation.

The winter sun is welcomed during the day hours helping the house to minimize oil consumption by raising the interior temperature, thus ,the insulation contributes to a certain, in long terms, economical running of the house and comfortable living for the family.

Architects:Koutsoftides architects
Location:Paphos-Cyprus.
Team:G.Kolonias structural engineer
         K.Tsiftes m/e consultant
Site area: 514m2
Project area:344m2 incl.garage,patio
Project Year: 2009

Photographs:Agisilaou & Spyrou