DOMa Diaries 07

Overview

The seventh edition of DOMa Diaries returned to the Benaki Museum, bringing together seven architects and architectural practices to explore the processes, constraints and unexpected conditions that shape architectural work. Rather than focusing solely on finished outcomes, the event examined the negotiations, limitations and shifts in perspective through which architecture is produced.

The programme opened with Constantinos Petrakos Architects, presenting a house in Nafplio, followed by We Design with a residence in Serifos, Sigurd Larsen with three projects in Kythnos and Crete, and Hiboux Architecture with a house in Aegina. Moving beyond residential architecture, Kostas Varotsos and Chrysanthi Asproulopoulou presented the new memorial and bioclimatic façade of the Ministry of National Defence; Athens Creative discussed the design and construction of a nursery school in Voula; and Georgia Syriopoulou and Leonidas Papalampropoulos presented the adaptive reuse of five historic tannery buildings as university facilities in Karlovasi, Samos.

Across these diverse cases, constraint emerged not simply as an obstacle but as a productive architectural condition—whether imposed by regulations, clients, difficult sites, existing structures, complex programmes or the architect’s own decision to intervene with restraint.

The day concluded with a discussion led by DOMa, extending the individual projects into broader questions about contemporary architectural practice: the distinction between dwelling and inhabitation, the transformation of buildings through time and use, and the responsibility of architects not necessarily to exploit every possibility offered by a site or regulation, but to identify the precise intervention through which architecture can achieve its greatest spatial coherence.