GEORGE KATODRYTIS / STUDIONOVA ARCHITECTS :: article :: BUILT PROJECTS :: VIRUS HOUSE

The Virus House and the plasticity of concrete
A two-storey L-shaped detached single-family house, built on a corner and on a flat site. There was a requirement to completely separate the upper from the ground floor. The “skin wrapping” concept is introduced: the ground floor slab wraps vertically and then horizontally, and also shifts slightly from its axis, in the plan. The upper floor acts as a “beam” and the two tilted end-walls tie both cantilevered slabs. The staircase is the only continuous spatial connection between the two floors. Externally, the building is mainly constructed in fair-face concrete to expose clearly the plasticity of the “wrap,” “shift” and “skin”.

The fold
The Virus House was developed from the idea of folding of the spatial continuum, and of the inside into the outside. Similar to paper origami, the design of the house has shifted from typology to topology. Thus, dynamic properties and variants are independent of size or shape, and are not changed by stretching, bending, or twisting. The formal composition, which was derived, allowed for a dynamic sculpting of the exterior: diagonal folds, cantilevers and oblique geometry, that invert the interior into the exterior, and vice-versa.

Project by GEORGE KATODRYTIS / STUDIONOVA: VIRUS HOUSE, 1998:

Filed under: BUILT-PROJECTS