Part of Something Installation by KN Group and Stamos Michael.

Athens based architectural design practice KN Group partnered with artist and designer Stamos Michael to present Part of Something, an ongoing research project, investigating the human relationship with the natural landscape through an architectural lens.

The collaborators contemplated a symbolic coexistence of nature and architecture through a site-specific installation. Taking the form of a pavilion enclosed within the realm of its open space surroundings, they call upon ecologies of the local, traditional, and personal vocabularies to form the basis of the structure.

Four individual elements — a tree, a platform, a set of partitions, and a gate — are pieced together to form a quad where materiality, the natural environment, craft, design, and open space coalesce in harmony. With a modular design developed by KN Group, all elements allow for several combinations that adapt to different locations while referencing a universal architectural vocabulary of local craftsmanship and production, conscious sourcing of materials and construction techniques.

Presented at the Vorres Museum during the first edition of Athens Design Forum 2021, the installation has since been erected and studied in a series of alternate locations, bolstering research on architectural development in the natural landscape.

Following KN Group’s research on matters concerning the architectural development in the natural landscape, Part of Something examines the function of the constructed space as the initial subject. For the installation, the design process is identical in all the studies and begins with the selection of a single tree. The tree serves a dual usage — as a local signifier, it is a binding element linking the construction, and by extension the human gesture, with the surrounding environment creating an in-situ installation on each landscape. Additionally, the tree serves the pavilion as a shade and protection apparatus even though there is no interference to its physical evolution, no alteration to its parts.

The architectural design produces two additional elements a platform and a series of vertical partitions. In Part of Something, the construction process of the walls refers to traditional building methods as seen around the Greek landscape, while their shape refers to cultural elements that originated from Greek antiquity and Byzantine culture to Cycladic architecture. The partitions are constructed from a wooden structure utilizing ancestral techniques that allow bonding without additional apparatus, while thermal and sound isolation is achieved by using natural materials such as straw and sawdust. Similar techniques allow the free-standing position of all vertical elements by attaching the structures to the frame of the platform.

Materiality, coatings, and colour differentiate according to the site characteristics, the environmental conditions as well as the aging process of each tree. In juxtaposition to the tree that calls upon the specific geography and topography we are placed within, the last element of the pavilion, the gate, calls upon the specific urban setting that relates to the installation. The gate rejects a smooth transition to an ordered space that doesn’t serve a specific function, it is part of its surroundings, the surroundings is its origins and its reason for existence.

Related: Esperinos Hybrid Design Guesthouse in Athens.

[Images courtesy of KN Group and Stamos Michael.]