Vertical Home

Conceived as a vertical ensemble of three two-story residences, the Vertical Home explores how individuality and privacy can coexist within a compact, layered structure.

Located in a densely built neighborhood of Piraeus — an area transformed from low-rise housing to tall apartment blocks after the late 1980s — the project reinterprets vertical living within a limited urban plot. The building occupies a narrow 110 m² site within a fabric of small parcels and mid- to high-rise buildings, proposing a human-scale verticality defined by light, void, and materiality.

The design is structured around three key principles:
– Semi-outdoor inner gardens
– Fluid, double-height living spaces
– Concrete bedroom core

Each residence occupies two floors and is organized around a double-height semi-outdoor space — an inner garden carved into the body of the building. These spaces extend the living areas outward, bringing natural light and air deep into the interior while maintaining privacy and a sense of openness within the dense urban environment. In the upper duplex, this inner garden becomes an open veranda on the fifth floor and a small balcony above, forming a sequence of vertically connected outdoor areas.

The concrete core contains the private zones — two bedrooms per residence — and rises as a vertical structural spine from the basement to the sixth floor. Around it, the common areas unfold as double-height volumes that create visual and spatial connections between levels. While the three residences share the same design logic, each adapts in configuration to the needs of its residents.

In its overall composition, the Vertical Home balances density and openness, structure and void, privacy and exposure. It reinterprets the conventional Athenian apartment typology — creating a vertical home that breathes from within.