The client resided permanently in Germany. Her father had constructed the building in stages and she had spent her childhood in that very apartment. Now, a renovation was in order and she feared that her childhood memories would perish along with the worn windows and tiles. Upon her sharing these concerns with us, the renowned Korean artist Do Ho Suh immediately came to our mind. Focusing on concepts of memory, space and migration, Do Ho Suh creates spatial installations out of thin fabrics. One of his most important works, Seoul Home is a reproduction of his childhood home made of green polyester and thin metal frames.

Drawing inspiration from this, we too began to look for our own vocabulary, with which we would convey memories, materials, stories – traces of the previous apartment, in our proposal. The wall between the entrance hall and the living room was demolished and retraced as a thin metal structure, accommodating shelves out of materials and marbles that we salvaged during the works. Depending on the residents’ mood, this bookcase can be fuller or emptier, thus adjusting the visibility of the kitchen from the sitting area. Accordingly, the room in front of the entrance was removed, leaving behind only an arched metal frame. Slim iron structures as well as fine metal meshes in various scales were employed to create dematerialized spaces, as if the outlines of the old house co-existed with the new layout. We used pink, green and yellow square tiles, bringing back the colors and tones of the previous apartment. The floors were treated as a puzzle of old and new elements, marble, terrazzo and wood.

We radically transformed the layout, with only one bedroom and the bathroom remaining in the same position. The spacious terrace was further activated by placing a mesh for climbing plants, a space for a barbeque and an exterior shower for those hot Athenian summer days. By removing various partitions and installing a new translucent door between the common and the private areas, light spread throughout the apartment. Despite the substantial changes, the spirit of the client’s childhood home remains in the new apartment as an afterglow of time and space.