Ribbon

gnb architects

Short description

The unique and untamed landscape of the Cyclades, characterized by its geological violence and its elemental purity, acted not merely as a background to this architectural act, but as its very source. The wildness of the topography, in combination with the unusual and narrow geometry of the plot, did not constrain the design process — it liberated it. From this condition, a synthetic idea was born: architecture not as intervention, but as continuation of the land’s primordial rhythms.

The concept of Ribbon emerges from a deep reading of the terrain: its folds, its erosions, its exposure to the Aegean winds. In this landscape, architecture could only exist as an ephemeral gesture — a line that follows the natural slope, in a quiet but precise choreography with the ground. This line unrolls like a ribbon on the hillside, sometimes touching the earth lightly, other times immersing into it, occasionally lifting off, always in movement. In doing so, the form performs a silent dance — it swirls, argues, kisses, disappears and re-emerges — until it eventually dissolves into the horizon and the sea beyond.

This linear movement is not only formal. It governs the spatial and functional logic of the project. The typologies unfold sequentially along a single axis, ensuring clarity, legibility, and a sense of spatial inevitability. Public and private zones, open and enclosed spaces, interior and exterior moments do not exist in isolation but flow continuously into one another, reinforcing the experience of the ribbon as a singular inhabitable landscape. Boundaries are dissolved. Architecture becomes topography.

Materiality follows the same logic of elemental restraint. The entire structure is composed of exposed concrete and locally sourced rock, treated with a minimal addition of white pigment — a subtle nod to the traditional whitewashed Cycladic vernacular, without imitating its form. The concrete, raw and bare, is left deliberately unpolished, allowing the wind and salt to inscribe their presence over time. This is a structure that accepts its aging, that welcomes patina as part of its truth.

Rather than resisting the site, the building embraces it. All volumes are carefully integrated into the slope, minimizing visual and environmental impact. The entire complex is perceived not as a built object, but as a spatial event. The composition respects the topographic lines and the native vegetation, while maintaining open visual connections towards the sea. The architecture exists in a state of equilibrium: it appears to rest gently on the land, as if it could be lifted and unrolled again elsewhere.

Interior spaces follow the same attitude of essentiality. Spatial organization is fluid, open, and stripped to the core: no ornamentation, no superfluous divisions. The few objects within the space — furniture, lighting, fittings — appear to be resting on the architecture rather than placed within it. They inherit the same stillness and modesty as the structure itself. In this way, the interior does not oppose the landscape, but becomes an extension of it.

Ultimately, Ribbon is not a building in the conventional sense. It is a passage — both literal and symbolic — through land, light, and air. It is architecture conceived as landscape, as movement, as an ephemeral trace on the ground. A minimal, poetic gesture that aspires to disappear into the very elements that gave birth to it: rock and wind.