The Ring House
On a remote location on the Southern coast of Crete, the Ring House by decaArchitecture is a collection of exceptional features and assets.
Back in 2012, the Athens-based decaArchitecture designed the master plan for a three-building compound in Agia Galini, a village by the Libyan Sea, a little less than 70km away from Heraklion.
Although named the Ring House, the ground plan is more of a "V" but with rounded tip and is not unveiling its secret straight away. But, it becomes clearer in the view: the slope on which the building lies closes the ring. While the rounded tip of the "V" is directed downhill towards the sea, the hilltop in the back of the house limits the space between the two building legs to a closed inner courtyard.
Two concrete beams follow the topography of the hill to define the outline of the house. The ring is articulated by these concrete beams. It provides protected shaded areas, well-ventilated interiors, surfaces for solar collection panels and protects an inner garden planted with varieties of citrus trees and edible plants. Altogether the house and its garden are designed to form a temperate microclimate, an oasis within an intensely beautiful but physically demanding environment.
At a broader scale, the house is a landscape preservation effort. In the past, the topography had been severely scarred by the random and informal carving of roads. The excavation material extracted during the house’s construction, was used to recover the original morphology of the land.
Furthermore, a thorough survey of the native flora was done in order to understand the predominant biotopes in the different slopes in the plot. During the spring, prior to construction, seeds were collected on site and cultivated in a greenhouse to grow more seeds. These were then sowed over the road scars for the regeneration of the flora.
Pictures by decaArchitecture and George Messaritakis.
