Type: New construction
Status: In Progress
Year: 2023
Services: architecture | lighting
Client: Private
Design Team: Aude Mazelin | Vasiliki Ragia | Eleana Kremmyda

Our inspiration for the design of the unbuilt apartments building “Floating Box” in the coastal town of Vlorë, Albania, has its starting point from the phenomenon of globalization and free people’s movement both in a global and local level. The goal of our proposal is to create a symbolic expression form referring to the way of living under the keys of globalization, with respect, sensitivity, and harmony to the environment of a city which still has references to the communist period, while today it is developed in a rapid pace.

The way of living of residents-users who are in movement in combination with the synthetic principles of our office, is an important factor for our design choices.

We prefer to design a residential building with the form of a box – a typological and morphological reference to the Cycladic architecture–giving the impression that it has been invented and reflecting the way of living of those special users.

The box is pierced by a glass volume, placed in the heart of the box, including separately glass houses in a vertical arrangement. The selection of this material aspires to express extroversion and willing for communication and dialog with the environment and the local society. The white casing uniform of the box comes to “hug” and “protect” the user, while at the same time it works like a cloak that “dresses” uniformly all elevations.

Southern and northern elevations, are designed by curved spaces that pierce the casing of the box, giving movement to the views, depending on the view and the internal arrangement creates large openings. The side views with the interspersed gaps of orthonormal shape offer the comfort of the user’s privacy.