'Olive Tree House' Wins 3 Design Awards

Summary

The Olive Tree House in Halkidiki, Greece, designed by archi­tect Eva Sopeoglou, has received mul­ti­ple awards for its sus­tain­able and inno­v­a­tive design, includ­ing the Popular Choice at the 2017 Architizer A+ Awards in New York. The home’s exte­rior design was inspired by the shade of olive trees, with a focus on sus­tain­abil­ity and min­i­mal impact on the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment, cre­at­ing a con­nec­tion between the indoors and out­doors.

The Olive Tree House, a small sum­mer retreat by archi­tect Eva Sopeoglou is located in Halkidiki, Greece. Overlooking olive groves and the sea, the house has been praised for its bril­liant sim­plic­ity.

The home has won three awards for its inno­v­a­tive design includ­ing the Popular Choice at New York’s 2017 Architizer A+ Awards, the Best First Project by a Young Architect at the 2017 Domes Awards in Athens, and the 2016 Surface Design Award in the Light and Surface Exterior cat­e­gory in London.

The client brief was for a small and low-main­te­nance week­end home, and one of the key fea­tures of the design is sus­tain­abil­ity. As such, the project was approached in an eco­log­i­cal way, mak­ing the sur­round­ing trees and shrubs part of the com­po­si­tion. It can thus be said that the design was tack­led from the out­side in. The pro­jec­t’s com­po­nents were pre-fab­ri­cated and can be dis­as­sem­bled at any time, leav­ing a min­i­mal impact on the sur­round­ings.

The wall pat­tern was inspired by the shade of olive trees and the posi­tion of the home is aligned with car­di­nal points so that it gives this fea­ture max­i­mum impact. As the sun moves through­out the day, the shad­ows cre­ated by the tex­tile-like pat­tern move and change, mim­ic­k­ing the nat­ural envi­ron­ment. The east cre­ates col­or­ful shad­ows in the morn­ings, whilst the south­ern sun­light around mid­day cre­ates dra­matic light effects in the main area.

Interior com­fort was achieved by study­ing the local ther­mal phe­nom­ena and winds, as well as cre­at­ing nat­ural ven­ti­la­tion via the sloped roof. The 3 x 7m struc­ture includes sev­eral rooms con­nected by a cor­ri­dor.

The light­weight metal fab­ri­ca­tion was devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Metalso, and the per­fo­ra­tion and folds were made using an indus­try grade sheet metal CNC punch­ing machine. Building the home included exper­i­ment­ing with cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal CAD/CAM tech­nol­ogy. Each metal panel is made from gal­va­nized metal and ensur­ing min­i­mal mate­r­ial wastage. The metal sheets were machine-per­fo­rated, hand-folded, and partly CNC-folded to cre­ate the 3D tex­ture of the walls. Each panel also has a pow­der-coated paint fin­ish.

The olive design of the metal struc­ture is an artis­tic way to bring the out­doors into the rec­tan­gu­lar metal struc­ture, thus blur­ring the sep­a­ra­tion between out­doors and indoors; olive trees are the theme through­out. This makes the home a par­adise within nature, which is also min­i­mal­is­tic. Moreover, the col­ors and design blend into the nat­ural envi­ron­ment, truly cel­e­brat­ing the olive tree by show­cas­ing its won­ders.

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