Idiom Architectural Studio with Loukas Bakas renovates a 1960s Athenian apartment, replacing a fragmented layout with open, light-filled spaces. Corridors are removed to enhance continuity, while restored wooden floors, mosaics, and marble preserve the space’s material identity. New insertions in Dionisos marble and metal introduce a refined dialogue between heritage and contemporary urban living.
The Benaki Street apartment occupies the top floor of a typical Athenian polykatoikia from the early 1960s—a mid-century residential typology that has significantly shaped the city’s urban fabric. Its façade reflects the architectural language of the period, combining ground-floor commercial activity with repetitive residential levels defined by elongated balconies, and a recessed upper floor.
The original layout followed the conventions of its time, with small, enclosed rooms arranged around a central stairwell and connected by narrow corridors. This configuration resulted in fragmented, inward-looking interiors with limited access to natural light. Despite these spatial limitations, the apartment retained a rich material palette—wooden floors, mosaics, and marble—that continues to define the distinctive domestic identity of the Athenian polykatoikia.
The renovation reinterprets this condition through a strategy that prioritizes spatial continuity, light distribution, and material preservation.
The intervention unfolds through three key operations. The first eliminates the corridors, redistributing their surface area to adjacent rooms and enhancing spatial openness. The second consolidates the living room, dining area, and kitchen into a unified open-plan environment, complemented by a newly articulated entrance threshold that functions as an organizational core, structuring movement and guiding light into the depth of the apartment. The third addresses materiality, combining restoration with contemporary insertions: existing wooden floors, mosaics, and marble are preserved, while Dionisos marble, powder-coated metal, and crafted wood elements define the new interventions.
The apartment extends outward through three terraces, reinforcing a Mediterranean mode of living that blurs the boundary between interior and exterior.
The main terrace accommodates outdoor seating, while the smaller terraces introduce planting, enhancing the dwelling’s relationship with light, air, and the surrounding urban context.
The project transforms a compartmentalized mid-century dwelling into a cohesive and luminous domestic landscape, where spatial clarity, material continuity, and carefully calibrated interventions redefine contemporary living within the framework of Athenian architectural heritage.
Plans
Facts & Credits
Project title: Apartment on Benaki Street
Project location: Benaki Street, Athens, Attica, Greece
Completion: 2025
Client: Private individual
Project size: 100 m² interior, 30 m² exterior (three terraces)
Architecture: IDIOM Architectural Studio with Loukas Bakas
Photography: Alina Lefa