Ateno Architecture Studio sinks Olen resort into Greek cliff edge

Greek practice Ateno Architecture Studio has completed Olen, an underground coastal hotel on the island of Syros, which is half-buried into its cliff-edge site to offer uninterrupted views across the Aegean Sea.

With a brief to create a seven-suite resort on the relatively untouched site, Athens-based Ateno Architecture Studio prioritised blending Olen into the landscape, creating a stepped form described by the studio as "amphitheatrical".

This created a contrasting mixture of open, expansive terraces and skylit, subterranean rooms set deep into the cliff edge, with the whole composition framed by walls coated in textured, earth-toned render.

"Olen is located on a remote site on the island of Syros, where the natural landscape still prevails over the built environment," Ateno Architecture Studio co-founders Elias Theodorakis and Yiorgos Fiorentinos told Dezeen.

"The core design ambition was to preserve this balance, despite the project’s brief calling for a relatively large-scale intervention," they explained.

"The project is not defined by the composition of 3D objects, but rather by the assembly of horizontal and vertical surfaces – terrace planes, retaining walls, and cuts in the terrain – allowing the architecture to read as embedded in the landscape itself."

Olen is divided into three elements, named The Plane, The Line and The Point, which step down the site, connected by a zigzagging pathway. These areas gradually increase in privacy as visitors move down the site.

The Plane occupies the highest point of the site, defined by a curved section of retaining wall that frames a large terrace with a leaf-shaped pergola and pool.

Sunk into the hill are shared living spaces and a bedroom, while three additional bedrooms sit alongside smaller terraces within cubic volumes that project out towards the sea.

"The curved retaining walls that define The Plane, together with the pergola are the most significant gestures of the project," Theodorakis and Fiorentinos said.

"The serpentine geometry of the walls organises circulation, introduces a sense of theatricality, and creates an embracing condition that offers protection while remaining open toward the horizon and the endless sea," they added.

Below, The Line contains two larger subterranean living units that can operate separately or as a larger single unit, opening onto a shared terrace with a long, narrow infinity pool.

At the end of the path down the site is The Point, an independent, subterranean guesthouse that is fronted by a curved, stone retaining wall and a small circular pool.

This exposed stonework is the only departure from the textured, earth-toned rendered walls used throughout Olen, both for retaining walls and to frame skylights that reveal the subterranean areas below the hillside.

A warm, off-white palette defines the resort's interiors, chosen to create a light and airy atmosphere despite the subterranean nature of many of its spaces.

This is complemented by light stone floors that unify the external terraces with the internal rooms and offer a cool surface underfoot during summer.

Elsewhere in Greece, architect Savvas Psathas recently designed a wellness centre in Santorini that steps down steep cliffs in the town of Oia to overlook the island's volcanic caldera.

Another half-buried building on a coastal site in Greece is NCaved, a house by Mold Architects that sits in a secluded cove.

The photography is by Yiorgis Yerolymbos.

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