The Amphitheater House
The amphitheater house is built in Hydra, a traditional small town, situated in an island close to Piraeus, the port of Athens. The building was constructed above the ruins of an older quasi-orthogonal foundation wall: none of the characteristics of the older construction was obvious when the operation for its design started. The material of its walls is the material that occurred from the excavation of the stone that laid underground the site.
The project challenges the possibilities of an empty – “construction site” like – living place. The space is organized around a high-ceiling interior that reaches, in parts, 10 meters height. The amphitheater that occupies the central part of the high space replaces the living room of the house; the amphitheater gives shape to the gatherings that occur in it or around it. The house's kitchen space and the rooms are included in a narrow zone, located in the eastern part of the house. A horizontal wooden platform is suspended over the interior space, proposing an area that can be used as a master bedroom viewing the island's port.
The house orchestrates a multiplicity of different situations that can swift its character according to each temporary inhabitation. The inhabitation of the house is analogue to the series of its transformations. Different interpretations of the house are translated in different dispersions of mobile objects and elements of its electronic equipment. The scene of the house has been designed in order to present every dispersion of its objecthood. The amphitheater house is proposed as an essay about emptiness and theatricality while it forms a post fordist - vacation space or an immaterial labor villa in the conditions of a post network society.
