ichNos is a contemporary house taking shape on a hillside on Amorgos, positioned to take in the island’s terrain and the open Aegean. It is new construction, in progress, for a private client, with Mykonos Architects engaged on the architecture. Visiting guests get a floor of their own: four separate guesthouses cut into the hill below the main living rooms.
Amorgos is an island set apart from the rest of Greece, and that is the condition any house there is built against. ichNos answers it by reading the ground it stands on. The plan follows the contours of the land with restraint, and the house is drawn to adapt to the site rather than impose on it. The studio’s own account calls it an extension of the topography, and puts simplicity, context and permanence at the centre of the design.
How the house is organised
The plan divides into two: living above, guesthouses below. The main living rooms occupy the upper level. The guesthouses are four, independent, embedded in the hillside. The two levels are connected inside, so each party keeps its own ground without losing the run of the house, and the site still reads as one sequence from the upper terraces down.
Keeping the guesthouses on a level of their own does two things at once. It gives each party its privacy, and it holds the sequence of spaces across the site together, so the house reads as one piece of ground and not a cluster of buildings.
Because the lower level is cut into the slope, ichNos shows less of itself to the hill than its floor count suggests. The built mass stays low, its physical impact on the ground is slight, and the guesthouses read as part of the terrain they sit in.
Four separate guesthouses is a different proposition from four bedrooms along a corridor. It suits a party that arrives together and still wants to close its own door at the end of the evening.
Materials and light
The palette is short. Earth-toned surfaces, textured plaster and natural stone carry the rooms, with controlled lighting alongside them, and the intended effect is calm and grounded. Water is part of the scheme too, including an infinity pool on the horizon line.
The house answers the Cycladic climate with shaded outdoor areas, protected courtyards and open terraces. There is somewhere to sit through the heat of the afternoon and somewhere else to sit when the air moves off the sea. The terraces are drawn to take the light and the cooling breeze. Large openings frame the Aegean and the island of Nikouria, and the view through them is uninterrupted.
The studio
Mykonos Architects describes itself as founder-led, working in Greece and internationally. Aude Mazelin is its founder, creative director and principal architect. Xara Karatzali is a senior architect, lighting architect and partner. The design team credited on ichNos is Aude Mazelin, Nikolas Alyssandratos, Xara Karatzali.
The studio works from two addresses, Lino Paragka on Mykonos and Lempesi 13 in Athens. ichNos appears in its own portfolio index under Amorgos, Greece, alongside a second house on the island, The Eye, which Aude Mazelin also leads.
Who is this for
ichNos will suit a household that travels with others and wants everyone to keep their own quarters: three generations of one family, or two or three couples taking a summer together. It is a house for people who like arriving somewhere that takes effort to reach, and who want the hillside and the water in front of them instead of a town at the door. Nothing about it is finished yet, so for now it is a design to follow on Amorgos.
