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Villa Incisa

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Villa Incisa

Subterranean residence in Monte Vardia, Chania

Emerging from the arid hillside, this residence straddles the boundary between architecture and landscape. Carved from the earth, the act of excavation transforms the ground volume into living space. The design features a dialogue between geology and geometry, between the permanence of earth and the transience of house life.

The structure develops through angular strokes carving the slope, creating spaces oriented to capture specific views, breezes, and light conditions. This move forms terraces, ditches, and cavities off the earth, arranging a progression of privacy, both indoors and outdoors. The interplay of shadow, light, and reflection shapes an experience that is both sheltering and expansive.

A tranquil pool at the central terrace emerges as a contemporary oasis, mirroring the sky and diffusing light into the subterranean interiors. Above the terraces, delicate cantilevered pergolas extend like wings, offering shade and defining open-air rooms without disturbing the natural contours.

The building uses both natural materials and refined modern textures, blending the chromatic and tactile language of its environment with that of contemporary materials. The former grounds the project in the surrounding landscape, while the latter accentuates its tectonic geometry.

The project embraces a turn toward topographic architecture: a built form that blends into the land’s geometry and features. It challenges the notion of architecture as an object and highlights it as a condition — a way of inhabiting the earth differently, and poetically.

Team Members Antonis Dysseakis, Nikos Fournaris, Yannis Prosoparis
Structural engineer Pantelis Diakoumakis
EM study Artemis Koumadorakis
3D Visualization inDetail Architecture
Plot area 4,005.02 m²
Total area 395.12 m²
Design year 2026

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