DOMa Diaries 05

Overview

The fifth edition of DOMa Diaries returned to the Benaki Museum, inviting eight Greek architectural practices to present projects that had yet to be built. Focusing on process, methodology and creative uncertainty, the event turned its attention to architecture in its most fluid state: the period before ideas, negotiations and decisions crystallise into built form.

The programme opened with 3H Architects, represented by Ioanna Choleva and Nikitas Chatzimichalis, and The Architect’s House. Designed by one of the practice’s founders for himself, the project raised questions about what happens when architect and client become the same person: whether the absence of an external client creates greater freedom for experimentation or, conversely, removes the limits that allow a design to reach resolution. Rena Sakellaridou followed with a house in Sifnos, examining the productive tension between the client’s desire for a recognisably Cycladic character and the architect’s pursuit of a more deliberate compositional order.

SOUTH Architecture, represented by Chrysostomos Theodoropoulos and Eleni Livani, presented Farmhouse No. 3 in Chios, part of an ongoing investigation into how the Greek countryside might be inhabited today when it is no longer the primary place of residence. Rather than directing the house towards the expected sea view, the project turns inward, creating a sequence between interior, semi-outdoor and outdoor spaces that seeks a renewed relationship with the landscape. Micromega Architecture & Strategies then presented Cavea Naxia, two houses on the western coast of Naxos whose architecture emerges from an intimate engagement with the site’s vegetation, rock formations and local stone, proposing locality as something derived from the specific material conditions of a place rather than from an imported image of Cycladic architecture.

Returning to Athens, FLUX Office, represented by Eva Manidaki and Thanassis Demiris, presented the new Acropolis shop. Located within the immediate environment of the monument and Philopappos Hill, the project explored how a small building could establish its own architectural presence while remaining sensitive to an exceptionally charged context. Through its light structure, alternation of transparent and solid surfaces, and careful attention to materials and textures, the pavilion seeks to become both a continuation of its setting and an autonomous spatial statement.

A Whale's architects represented by Iris and Leda Lykourioti, introduced Hotel Pluriversalis, the transformation of a two-star hotel in Skyros. Existing at the time of the presentation almost entirely as an idea, the project pushed the theme of architectural uncertainty to its limits. Conceived as a gradual, lightly financed transformation, it proposes connecting the hotel with the owners’ agricultural, pastoral and fishing activities while allowing the design itself to evolve slowly in response to changing circumstances.

Agis Mourelatos presented E55 Office Building, a vertical addition to a post-war house in the dense urban fabric of Ampelokipi. A precise metal-and-glass structure occupies the limited space available between neighbouring buildings, establishing a deliberately understated presence within the continuous concrete frontage of Athens. The programme concluded at the scale of urban design with Bouki Babalou and Antonis Noukakis, who presented the redevelopment of the Acheiropoietos–Agia Sofia axis in Thessaloniki. Their proposal creates a continuous walk towards the sea and introduces a sequence of green public spaces around three significant churches, working with the city’s existing spatial dynamics rather than imposing a radically new order upon them.

Across these eight projects, DOMa Diaries #5 approached architecture not as a linear progression towards construction, but as an open-ended process shaped by doubt, dialogue, context, time and changing circumstances. From private houses and small interventions to tourism and urban design, the presentations foregrounded the unresolved stages of architectural thought—precisely the moments in which uncertainty can become a productive design tool.