Reinventing: The Geometric House

Little boxes. Yes, that’s what we said, little boxes. Is that all there really is to modern life, when it comes down to it? We’re born and we get placed in a crib – for all intents and purposes, a little box. Or, if you’re a newborn in Finland, you’ll literally be placed in a box – a cardboard one.

Wait a few years, and you’ll graduate to another ‘box’, the classroom. After that, the probability is that you’ll end up in an even bigger box – the office. Depending on the whim of your employer, you might even be confined to cubicle hell.

As if that wasn’t enough, our private lives are little better with rising rents and real estate prices confining most of us to live in what are also little more than boxes. Even the courageous few who rebel against the tyranny of the property market end up chasing hopeful dreams, such as the tiny house movement – yes, you guessed it, even smaller boxes.

Sometimes it takes true vision to stop for a moment and, ahem, think outside the box. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel, but surely there might be value in at least questioning the role of the box.

One such free thinker is the Greek architect Tilemachos Andrianopoulos who embraced the triangle to create a unique home in Megara, Greece, that is both supremely suited to its site and the local conditions, while also creating flexible, livable spaces.

Triangles have always been used in architecture, valued from the Pyramids onwards for their strength and stability, but it’s the good old boxy rectangle that remains the staple of architectural design.

If you’re not convinced by the liberating potential of the triangle, take a look at the house for yourself – and Andrianopoulos’ exquisitely ingenious architectural solutions nestled amidst olive trees and looking on to the drama of the Geraneia Mountains.

Born in Athens in 1974, Tilemachos Andrianopoulos is the founder of the Tense Architectural Network (TAN) and is Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at the National Technical University in Athens.