Shimmer

This project was named an Merit winner in the 69th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards, and was featured in the March 2022 issue of ARCHITECT.

“I was really drawn to this. I’m happy to see representation taking an active role. Both from its abstraction to these images, one cannot really deny [the project’s] visceral quality.” — Juror Kutan Ayata

Located in the rolling, piney uplands of northeastern Greece, the aptly named Drama region is the setting for a private dining facility with its own sense of theatrics. Shimmer, as the restaurant is called, was commissioned by electronics maker Raycap for its sprawling woodland campus, a place for rest and refreshment for staff and visitors alike. With that simple brief in hand, the team at Athens-based Kois Associated Architects pared its design to essentials: a four-square pavilion, its flat roof supported by slender pilotis of gleaming metal and its structure bound in a bubble of glass that makes it appear to hover over the landscape. The sharp juxtaposition of natural surrounds and pure geometric form is blurred by the sudden eruption at the pavilion’s center of a lushly planted mound of earth, pierced by a tunnel that leads into—and effectively conceals—the restaurant’s primary service and mechanical core. With technical know-how and a feel for the picturesque, Kois conjures a striking architectural image, one that seems to take the famous formula of critic Leo Marx and double it—a machine in a garden, inside a machine in a garden.

PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Shimmer, Drama, Greece
Client/Owner: Raycap S.A.
Architects: Kois Associated Architects, Athens. Stelios Kois (principal architect), Leonardos Katsaros (project leader), Antonios Sarlanis (3D Vizualiser), Federica Scalise (design team), Vasiliki Papargiri (design team)
Size: 8288.211 square feet
Cost: 4,500,000 USD