Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2023
Cascading Terraces Residential Apartments
- A' Design Award 2023 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2023
- CLIENT: Potiropoulos and Partners
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 32,747
- Verification code D61F067070 · Verify this award
About Cascading Terraces Residential Apartments
The development of the concept is based on two linked volumes parallel to one side of the site, in dialogue with the particular nature of the immediate context, addressing the site boundaries and movement. Responding to the orientation, views, wind direction, and the seasonal changes of the landscape, the complex opens up or closes, developing each time a different appearance, as the transition from the natural to the built environment establishes a system of visual and conceptual relationships and parameters that inherently affect the architectural space.
Within the contemporary discourse surrounding sustainable residential design and the integration of natural systems into urban dwelling, this architectural visualization presents a compelling exploration of the terraced building typology reimagined for twenty-first century sensibilities. The design demonstrates remarkable compositional sophistication in its arrangement of projecting floor plates, each stepping backward and forward to create a dynamic silhouette that suggests both geological formation and cultivated garden simultaneously. The architects appear to engage deeply with biophilic design principles, where every residential unit gains direct connection to planted outdoor space, transforming conventional balcony provision into genuine garden terraces of substantial depth and variety. Technical achievement is evident in the structural expression, where slender columns and deeply cantilevered slabs create an impression of hovering horizontal planes defying gravitational expectation, while the careful proportioning of solid to void generates rhythm and visual interest across the extended facade. The material palette demonstrates thoughtful restraint, limiting primary surfaces to warm-toned concrete or stone that complements rather than competes with the abundant greenery, while extensive glazing systems maximize transparency and light penetration into interior spaces. Thematic resonance emerges through the work's meditation on the relationship between constructed shelter and natural environment, proposing that contemporary dwelling might achieve synthesis rather than opposition between these domains. The visualization invites consideration of how architectural form might facilitate daily encounter with plant life, seasonal change, and atmospheric variation, suggesting that quality of dwelling encompasses not merely spatial provision but experiential richness. Viewers might contemplate how such design approaches could transform urban residential environments into layered landscapes where the distinction between building and garden productively dissolves.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The development of the concept is based on two linked volumes parallel to one side of the site, in dialogue with the particular nature of the immediate context, addressing the site boundaries and movement. Responding to the orientation, views, wind direction and the seasonal changes of the landscape, the complex opens up or closes, developing each time a different appearance.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Approximate Total Building Area: 4580 square meters
- Tags
- architecture, residential, apartments, Greece, design, terrace, concrete, nature
- Production Technology
- In terms of materiality, raw concrete and white textured render are prominent in the building skin and fencing, developing a simple yet effective language. This approach, as expressed here spatially, implies materiality, temperature, density, weight and acoustic qualities, elements that are abstract but are derived from thorough experience.
- Design Challenge
- This emergent microcosm provides an intricate experience based on the dynamics between the man-made and the natural, the point of focus and the background, the familiar and the unknown, triggering sensations and emotions that capture the moment. Throughout this journey, experiences, spaces and materialities converge, either as parallel or as complimentary events.
- Project Duration
- Design: 2021
Location: Athens, Greece - Operation Flow
- The overall design approach was not preoccupied by a certain aesthetic correctness, but first and foremost to establish as a key parameter, the potential of a multi-sensory experience between the building and the landscape, and also aiming at the substantiation of individuality in architecture through the expression of the architectural object.
- Research
- The arrangement addresses a series of choreographed views of the landscape and is organized in public and private zones towards the landscape-via the terraces- and towards the site. A series of cascading terraces is developed resembling F.L. Wright Fallingwater. The design also considers the play of light on the textured surfaces, the depth of color, the manipulation of the form and the overall aesthetic qualities.
- Inspiration
- The design approach prioritizes the utilization of the main view which opens up towards the SW and NW due to the site s location and topography of the suburb of Kifissia. The internal arrangement attempts to address a series of carefully choreographed views of the landscape and is organized in public and private zones that are extrovert towards the landscape, via the terraces, and introvert towards the site. This results in a series of cascading terraces at a slight angle with each other.
- Image Credits
- 3D Visualization: Batis Studio
Colors of Cascading Terraces Residential Apartments
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