Steel house in Patras
The design of this house was based on a methodology which attempted to relate the structure of space with the autobiographical framework of its resident. After a series of detailed semistructured interviews it became evident the intention of the resident to live in a ‘house that does not look like a home’. Thus, in a specific life circumstance (what Anthony Giddens calls a 'critical situation') the resident preferred the differentiation from what was commonly accepted. Specifically, while negotiating the transition to the married family life a conflict with social conventions led to a conscious choice of an individual life path that was nor ‘closed’ neither typical but rather ‘open’ and alternative. The construction of the house was therefore a reflexive process where architecture came to empower this conscious choice. The design followed an open plan where the living room and the kitchen were organized as a continuous area room with the sleeping room - in the loft - being an indirect extension of the ground floor. Similarly, the appearance of the metal structure and large glazing into an environment characterized by the conservative reproduction of the widely accepted morphological references to the 'common taste' emphasized this contrast to the conventional social predispositions.
