Issa Megaron

The Issa Megaron is a single family, holiday house located in the intact heartland of the island of Vis, on a steep slope overgrown by lush greenery and without any infrastructure. It is designed for a large family of different generations and has a very simple layout on two levels - sleeping quarters/lounge on the first floor and a groundfloor open space dining/kitchen area. All the spaces are opened to the magnificent seaviews and the ground floor is opened to the covered / uncovered terraces and pool deck. The green roof and all the surrounding greenery are designed as a part of the natural landscape, with all the indiginous plants, mimicing the existing enviroment. This house has 100% energetic autonomy: natural cooling and ventilation, rainwater exploitation, solar panels, and other elaborate ways of exploiting natural resources, enabling the facility to function as a living.

This project is dealing with questions regarding the context of the site boundary, envisioned on the plot that is read as a ‘’void ‘’, blank space with a deception that context is non existent. Given that the "genius loci" is not only the plot an island of Vis but actually Mediterranean, we conceive the house by using two main elements that characterize the genius loci on a macro and a micro cultural scale: the system of the Socrates Megaron and the ancient local stone drywalls. The design that emerges from such conditions is unobtrusive a symbiosis of the new and old stone wall topography. The house is envisioned as a dug in volume, a residential pocket between the stretches of space forming walls, an artificial grotto, a memory of a primitive shelter and a new rural manmade topography, all by using simple construction technologies. The complete lack of infrastructure and general inaccessibility imply that selfsustainability is prerogative and the only solution for the completion of the project, that encompasses the plausibility of the project, minimal costs, satisfaction of all user needs, local government and urban plans as well as the architectural expression.

The house has a simple layout but the construction was rather demanding in a sense of large spans and architectural concrete execution. All the bearing elements are made of reinforced, architectural concrete, visible in the interieur and exterieur. Choice of materials is also basic –concrete, stone, wood. Innovation in architectural design is in the sense of reinventing simple traditional construction technologies typical of the Mediterranean, something that is in times of hi-tech architecture, forgotten and abandoned, while it completely satisfies the needs of the modern man. Easily available and renewable materials used from the site or extended location, ensure a lower cost of transportation and work. The systems that ensure 100% energetic autonomy are: –CSP system is used with dug in heat containers –hot water -photovoltaic cells - electricity - the bio climate oriented design-passive ventilation and cooling, south exposed during the winter, protected during the summer-low energy use -recycling of rain water –systems of natural filters -materials compatible to the local area and weather conditions -longevity of the structure and minimal maintenance.