The Architect’s House explores homes conceived as both refuge and manifesto—spaces architects design for themselves, where daily life, personal values, and architectural thinking converge. Through these self-authored dwellings, the series reveals how architecture becomes an intimate act of inhabitation, experimentation, and self-reflection, offering rare insight into the discipline from the inside out.

Personal space is no more than a mirror of how we metabolize the world. For architect and photographer Nikos Kouklakis, his 43 m² home studio in the old town of Chania, Crete, is an endless curation of objects on display — a personalized mosaic of things.

-by Melina Arvaniti-Pollatou

Facing this project, one key reference point comes to mind, Song Dong’s artwork ‘Waste Not’, framing Kouklakis’ design approach within a broader exploration of memory, family, loss, and the quiet persistence of everyday life.

Originally built in the 1970s, this ground-floor apartment became the home of Nikos’ grandmother in 1996. Twenty years later, in 2026, he reconfigures the space to house both his dwelling and his professional practice, in a gesture that states: to put your things in order means to put your past into shape, too. Objects are so much more than simply things. They are pointers of meaning, accumulated knowledge, carrying — with the brutal truth of their presence — unspoken stories, personal legends, and inherited dreams.

Centering on the need for display — “basically a showcase of myself,” as he puts it — Kouklakis demolishes blind, opaque walls, aiming for a luminous, open plan home studio space organized around a pine plywood multifunctional piece of furniture.

By tightening together the bedroom, the kitchen, and the dining/living space, this wooden spine extends from ceiling to floor, functioning as a partition wall, kitchen countertop, bookshelf, wardrobe, storage room, and, of course, a display shelving unit for the numerous objects hosted in-house.

A beige linen curtain replaces the wall that once separated the bedroom from the rest of the house. A mattress on wheels carries the sleeping space, adjacent to the home’s only enclosed room — the bathroom. An open mezzanine level, right above the bathroom, enhances visual layering while functioning as an elevated indoor garden and an additional display space for the boundless collection of things. A linear cut filled with glass bricks at the top of the wall defining the bathroom brings natural light into the enclosed space while pointing out where the red bathroom curtain, actually, is.

A marine plywood desk hosts Studio Nikos Kouklakis entirely bound with objects: a laptop, a table lamp, a bunch of stickers and postcards, The Songyang Story book on architectural acupuncture, and a mechanical pencil form a constellation of deeply personal things.

The exposed infrastructure of cables, pipes, and lights brings a crafty vibe to the space — brutal, yet strangely cozy.

Inside, brown wooden window frames match the pine plywood tones, while pistachio-green shutters pair with the light beige hue of the exterior coating. The house’s doorstep is clad in white marble from Kavala, forming a protected, semi-outdoor, semi-public space for neighborly gatherings, unexpected encounters, and impromptu meet-ups.

In this highly charged mnemonic environment, the home studio of Nikos Kouklakis reflects his very own poetics of space, pointing out that dwelling is an articulation of lost-and-found whimsical things.

Facts & Credits
Project title  Home Studio Nikos Kouklakis
Typology  Interiors, Renovation, Residential, Workplace
Location  Chania, Crete, Greece
Area  43 m²
Status  Completed, 2025
Architecture, Supervision, Photography  Studio Nikos Kouklakis


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