Veiled, Aegean Sea, Greece, 2014

The proposal is situated on a beautiful site on an Aegean island. It revisits the hotel typology, proposing a new relationship between artifice and nature. The landscape is not only a site to see, but an environment of intensities to experience. The structure offers an amplified awareness of the specific qualities of site. Architectural form becomes the medium: dissecting, distorting and amplifying its surroundings. The structure creates new definitions of place, replacing a typical view with a kaleidoscope of sensations.

Veiled is a permeable canopy that gently floats above a rocky valley overlooking the Aegean sea. Its pliable surface sometimes follows the steep incline and acts a wall; in other areas it spans across the deep canyon and becomes a roof. Instead of a sculptural object sitting on top of the landscape, the structure is within it, allowing the landscape to slip inside. The changing ground under the undulating surface creates diverse scales of space, from intimate to vast and collective. A field of columns and tension cables support the structure and create interior areas. In this dense field, horizontal surfaces and lightweight walls span between columns, generating enclosures for privacy and rest.

The singular gesture of the roof measures the diversity and complexity of the landscape it inhabits. Its experience is varied by elevation, location, as well as time of day and year. Its compound planar and curved geometry intensifies the experience. The canopy consists of varying layers of perforated and reflective surfaces that filter and refract light, mitigate heat, and generate sounds as wind blows through.

The created space is an amplified sensory experience of the Aegean landscape, its quality of light, topography, and textures. The experience is defined by changing conditions, varying microclimates, amplified, focused, colored by the canopy. Veiled catalyzes exploration and curiosity, central to an idea of the vacation.

Veiled is a concept proposal by Ilias Papageorgiou and SO–IL, for Tourism Landscapes, the Greek Participation in “Fundamentals” the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice.