The concrete frame went up in 1995, in the years when Samos was building fast for tourism. It was abandoned soon after, and the site was put up for sale. Buyers came to look, but no one took it on.
In 2008 our family, who run Armonia Bay across the road, bought the land and the frame. Work began in 2010. For the first few years we tried to adapt the original plans, but they could not give us what we wanted, and we reached a dead end.
Through a mutual friend we met Leonidas Papalampropoulos, a young architect who had recently won the DOMES award for Best Built Work. He is now Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Patras. His plans were radical. Large parts of the original structure had to be taken down, carefully, so as not to damage what remained.
Then came the materials. The teak window frames were made in northern Greece and travelled to Samos by road and sea. The floor stone for the rooms came from Mount Pelion, where we chose the slabs at the quarry. For the terrazzo floors, we watched the stone chips being crushed and sieved.
Semeli opened in 2016, twenty-one years after the first concrete was poured.
BEFORE
AFTER
