“Our extensive experience in both research and construction, as well as architectural design and interior design, provide us with all the necessary tools to undertake projects of varying types and, most importantly, different scales.”
Athina TriantafyllouFounder and Design Director
«Πιστεύω ότι τα δύο αυτά υλικά είναι πολύ εύπλαστα, δίνοντας διαφορετικές επιφάνειες ανάλογα με την επεξεργασία και την τελική υφή. Ο ίδιος όγκος μαρμάρου, αναλόγως του τρόπου κοπής, έχει διαφορετικά νερά και άρα διαφορετικό τελείωμα. Παράλληλα, η επεξεργασία της επιφάνειάς τους αμβλύνει ή εντείνει τα νερά και το χρώμα των πετρωμάτων, με αποτέλεσμα να προκύπτουν διαφορετικά τελικά προϊόντα κάθε φορά. Μου αρέσει να συνδυάζω διαφορετικά υλικά και υφές.
Παράδειγμα αποτελεί η μελέτη ενός υπόσκαφου boutique hotel στις Κυκλάδες. Πέτρα και μάρμαρο συνυπάρχουν στον ίδιο χώρο, με διαφορετικές υφές και επεξεργασία. Χρησιμοποιήσαμε την πέτρα στην αδρή μορφή της ως accent detail πίσω από το κεφαλάρι και ως όγκο για τη δημιουργία του καθιστικού στο δωμάτιο. Στο λουτρό σχεδιάσαμε ένα νιπτήρα από κολλητά μάρμαρα με αδρή επιφάνεια. Για την επίστρωση του δαπέδου επελέγη πέτρα σε πλακίδια μεγάλων διαστάσεων. Οι προσόψεις των guestrooms επενδύθηκαν με ακανόνιστη τοπική πέτρα.»
According to my experience, in most European markets, Brand Identity is an all-inclusive concept that encompasses Interior Design as one of its most significant components. Specifically, the role of Interior Design is to convey the Brand Identity philosophy in all spaces, physical and digital alike.
Regardless of the office/store size or decorating choices, Interior Design should always be a natural extension of the Brand and the guiding light of all your related decisions. However, as far as materialization is concerned, Interior Design can often come with added complexity.
Thus, a Brand Style Guide is a necessity for all companies, big and small alike, since it is a rulebook that helps you present yourself to the world in a visually consistent way. It represents your company’s personality and aspirations.
Define your Brand’s core values. How can you visualize them? What has worked for your Brand in the past?
How do other Brands inspire or influence you? As you can see, inspiration is everywhere.
In addition, make sure to involve key people in your company in this creative process.
And last but not least, keep track of everything that inspires you and fits your vision for the future.
Introduce your Brand to the world. A clear-cut summary will give people insight into the heart and soul of your company.
Define your Mission (why your company exists), your Vision (where you position your Brand in the future) and the company’s Values.
Determine your target market: what is the audience that interests you (who your customers are or would like to be).
Space: determine how to fill in the ambience (positive and negative space)
Light: decide how you balance natural and artificial light and how you play with shadows
Lines and forms: Structural features and the space’s furnishing influence the feel. Horizontal, Vertical or Diagonal lines can be very dynamic.
Colors: create an atmosphere: cozy, romantic, calm, dynamic. Colors should always match the Brand’s image.
Texture and Patterns: create the atmosphere of the space. Graphic, geometric and/or natural patterns make a huge difference in the environment. Rugs, carpets, textiles, and furniture bear a connotation on the Brand Image.
Décor: choose how do you decorate the space? Is it minimal? Is it with pieces of art? Color or plain? Elements of nature? Flowers /plants?
Once you’ve gathered your inspiration, it’s time to start working with a designer; start putting it all together. Choose a designer who, besides being talented, makes you feel comfortable and who understands what you are trying to achieve.
Brand Design is a discovery process, and your designer will be your companion during that journey. Combine your talents for a contemporary yet timeless design, and the outcome can only be successful.
on May 18th, we, the Epitomēe Design team pay tribute to those museums we have fallen in love with and feel constantly inspired by.
Some are architectural masterpieces themselves, while others merely house masterpieces. All are must-visits for those who appreciate art, design, and architecture.
Part of the famous ‘Golden Triangle of Art’ in Madrid, the Thyssen Museum is the one I fell in love with during my extended stay in Spain. Each visit inside its majestic 18th-century building, the former townhouse of the Dukes of Villahermosa, feels like going to an art history lesson. Wandering through its 1,000 paintings, spanning the history of art from the 13th to the 20th century, one can admire a work by El Greco and Caravaggio and a second later be enchanted by Willem de Kooning’s colors and Jackson Pollock’s unique style.
(Founder & Design Director)
Designer: Jean Nouvel
The product of Pritzker-prize winning architect Jean Nouvel’s
unique vision, Louvre Abu Dhabi is an impressive modern museum surrounded by the Arabian Gulf’s waters. Its 55 rectangular buildings are covered by a specially designed metal dome, consisting of 7,850 geometric stars of various sizes, to allow natural light to penetrate, simulating a ‘rain of light’. Its collection, presented across 6,400 square meters of galleries, includes ancient archaeological findings, decorative arts, neoclassical sculptures, paintings by modern masters and contemporary installations. The Louvre Abu Dhabi’s strong connection to Paris is evident in the 300 exhibits on display from the Louvre and other prestigious French museums.
(Business Development Manager)
Designer: Daniel Libeskind
The Daniel Libeskind designed building is distinguished by an emblematic monumentality. At the same time, it is a composition of paths and spaces that lead to a profoundly spiritual experience for the visitor. Through it, the very concept of the museum is re-approached. The space feels like a composition of fragments and the path through all the stages of mourning one experiences to reach the acceptance of the loss and the collective trauma. A visit to the Jewish Museum can be intense as what is sought through the movement in the building is to meet the essence of the tragedy of the Holocaust.
(Architect)
Designer: Zaha Hadid
Designed by Zaha Hadid, MAXXI is a showcase of stunning modern art. Located on a former military barracks site, the late architect designed it “like an ode to the multiple layers of history on which Rome was built”. Regarding the building’s interior, thin concrete beams and glass coatings have been placed on the roof, allowing natural light penetration. The stairs with the linear lighting are impressive, leading the visitors to the museum’s third level, ending in the large window with a view of the city.
(Junior Architect)
The Heraklion Archaeological Museum is one of the oldest and most important museums in Greece, and among the most famous museums in Europe. It houses representative artefacts from all periods of Cretan prehistory and history, covering a chronological span of over 5,500 years from the Neolithic period to Roman times. The Heraklion Archaeological Museum prides itself for its unique Minoan collection, which includes the masterpieces of Minoan art. It is rightly considered as the Museum of Minoan Culture par excellence.
This beautiful museum is in the town center; it was designed by the architect Patroklos Karantinos and was built between 1935 and 1958 on a site previously occupied by the Venetian monastery of Saint-Francis. The ruins of the monastery, destroyed by an earthquake in 1856, are visible in the museum’s garden.
(Operations Coordinator)
Built in baroque style in 1712, the historic Belvedere is one of the leading museums worldwide. It consists of two separate buildings, the Upper Belvedere and the Lower Belvedere, with luxury being evident everywhere as it was initially intended, as the summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy. Equally impressive are the majestic gardens that connect the two buildings. Its famous art collection includes works ranging from the Middle Ages to today. Highlights include the world’s most extensive collection of Gustav Klimt paintings (including “The Kiss”). Make sure to check out the interesting periodic exhibitions hosted at Lower Belvedere.
(Business Development Manager)
The Copernicus Science Center’s exciting feature is its mission to make the search for knowledge and sciences accessible and fun. The building is located on the banks of the Vistula River. On its two floors, it hosts many interactive exhibits, experiments, games, and laboratories that cover all scientific fields and applications of technology. Its shell is lined with vertical panels in seven different colors that alternate, giving the feeling of a three-dimensional puzzle as one approaches the entrance.
(Architect)
Designer: Rainer Mahlamaki
An impressive postmodern construction of glass, copper, and concrete, designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamaki and Ilmari Lahdelma. POLIN’s Core Exhibition is a journey through 1,000 years of the history of Polish Jews – from the Middle Ages until today. The building’s central feature that leaves all visitors speechless (me included) is its cavernous entrance hall. Similar in shape to a gorge, it references the crossing of the Red Sea by the people of Israel, known from the Exodus.
(Junior Architect)
A museum, unique to Greece, that pays tribute to the industrial past of the Cyclades capital. The permanent exhibition consists of 307 rare documents about Ermoupolis’ industrial heritage, including maps, the original Ernst Ziller architectural designs of the island’s neoclassical city hall and restored machines, accompanied by several tools, and equipment, raw materials and industrial products. It consists of the Katsimantis Dyeworks building, the Aneroussis Lead Shot Factory building, the Velissaropoulos Textile Factory building and the Kornilakis Tannery building. Among the museum’s, one can also see the first legendary electric car Enfield 8000, constructed in Greece in the 70s
(Operations Coordinator)
The omens for Greek Tourism continue to be favorable, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine and its tragic and unpredictable consequences.
According to experts, Greece is at the beginning of a record-breaking summer tourist season It is worth saying that the large number of direct flights from USA make Greece a very attractive destination for the Americans.
Tourists, mostly from developed western countries, have increased demands. Especially in accommodation, where design and high aesthetics meet trends that are here to stay (and prevail), like sustainable tourism.
Islands such as Santorini are already climbing even higher on the cosmopolitanism index, with new Michelin-starred restaurants, new premium hotel chains and new small boutique hotels-architectural masterpieces changing the landscape.
What does this mean for the average hotelier, the average tourist accommodation owner or the average home owner who wishes to thrive in a competitive and ever changing environment?
Based on our long experience in the renovation of tourist accommodation of all sizes in Greece (Athenian Riviera, Spetses) and abroad (Barcelona, Cairo, Dubai and Abu Dhabi), we at the Epitomēe Design, suggest the following steps:
Η ιστορία πίσω από την Epitomēe Design, το αρχιτεκτονικό γραφείο που ιδρύθηκε μέσα στην πανδημία και εξειδικεύεται στο σχεδιασμό μοναδικών concept με συναίσθημα και ιδιαίτερη αισθητική.
«Στη Γλυφάδα, όπου και μεγάλωσα, δημιούργησα το γραφείο μου. Ένα από τα πρώτα έργα μου ήταν η μελέτη και επίβλεψη ενός κτιρίου γραφείων και καταστημάτων επί της Λ. Βουλιαγμένης στη Γλυφάδα. Η ορμή του χαρακτήρα μου και η άγνοια κινδύνου της νιότης μου με βοήθησαν να ανταπεξέλθω στο βάπτισμα μου. Τα πρώτα χρόνια της σταδιοδρομίας μου αναλάμβανα έργα μελέτης ανέγερσης νέων κτιρίων. Όταν ξεκινούσα το σχεδιασμό έβαζα δυο στοιχήματα με τον εαυτό μου τη βέλτιστη αξιοποίηση των τετραγωνικών και τη καλύτερη δυνατή εμπορική αξιοποίηση.
Ήμουν πολύ περήφανη όταν το 2007 σχεδίασα μια πολυκατοικία στη Γλυφάδα, με πισίνα σε κάθε οροφοδιαμέρισμα. Το λέω έτσι απερίφραστα γιατί συνήθως αυτά αποτελούν προσωπικές νίκες που κατακτούμε. Έτσι λέω και στα συνεργεία όταν πηγαίνω στο εργοτάξιο “Μπράβο μας! Πόσο ωραία βγήκε αυτή η λεπτομέρεια!” Καλό είναι να δίνουμε τα εύσημα μεταξύ μας».
One of the elements that the pandemic has admittedly highlighted is that much of the office activity can be transferred home just as effectively. And indeed, few feel “nostalgic” to return to the daily traffic jam that accompanies our commute to work.
However, the consolidation of work from home in our lives highlighted, at the same time, its apparent limitations. Proving that an organization’s success still depends on face-to-face cooperation between its members, with the office remaining a necessary core of any critical activity.
This finding concerns the office as a concept. As a matter of reality, the office will never – after the end of the pandemic – return to the same form and layout that it had before. Several companies abroad have already understood it, immediately making the necessary adjustments and renovations to achieve the new functionality at the dawn of the new regularity we are going through.
Another paradox is that while the pandemic in the short term will theoretically lead to a reduction in the necessary square meters needed for a company to operate since part of its staff will be on permanent work from home status, in the long run, its needs for additional space will be more significant to meet the new health guidelines.
Considering that in the future, a large portion of the staff may work from home on certain days, companies should take into account in their plans that any given space at their disposal may not be filled with the same people at the same time. Hence it is necessary to invest in hotdesking , devoting specific work desks to the people who will take turns in them. Equipping them, also, technologically with the ability to have easy access to shared files and everything else they need for their smooth operation.
The era of large and luxurious meeting rooms, in which it was possible to gather most employees, seems to be over. According to the relevant research, those spaces, which were rarely used effectively anyway, will give way to smaller meeting rooms with brainstorming multi-purpose logic that, depending on the requirements, can be used either for meetings or as supplementary work desks.
Except for the company’s critical staff (president and senior executives), for whom the need for a closed personal office continues to apply, all other offices are likely to fit into the broader open space philosophy. Either in the same logic, we knew all these years or with the addition of phone booths (small personal offices from Plexiglass in the shape of enlarged telephone booths). A necessary condition for each office is to have the required distance from the other, both for health and purely psychological reasons. Something that was not currently the case with companies – for financial reasons – tending to place one office next to the other.
Excellent and frequent workplace ventilation is now and will continue to be a key priority for any business in the coming years. In terms of renovation, it translates into full utilization of the windows that each space has and the removal of spaces and offices that do not have access to it, with the possible exception of specialized isolation areas for those employees who may show symptoms of illness.
The same digital transformation that has allowed many companies to survive the pandemic is the one that will help them enter the realm of the hybrid workplace model that is clearly going to prevail.
An “experimental” model in which each entrepreneur will be asked to decide what suits the needs of his own business and what helps his employees be more productive. On the other hand of the same equation, for the first time in history, more employees than ever will have the option of working from home (with all the advantages and disadvantages that it entails).
If there is one thing sure in the midst of the ocean of uncertainty that we all face, it is that we will never go back to the concept of work and office the way we knew before the pandemic. The sooner we realize this, the faster we will recognize and take advantage of these increased mobility opportunities.
The existence and diffusion of corporate culture and philosophy, which has been proven to positively affect the overall business performance, creativity and cohesion of a team, is obviously more manageable with the office at the core of corporate activities. An atmosphere of cooperation and enhancement of employees’ personal development is easier to create when employees of all levels coexist in the same -specially designed- open space (and especially in public areas, the value of which stands out even more). No matter how many days a week, these employees choose to use the office.
If anything, the pandemic has proven to us is the difficulty of working from home. Especially when this happens simultaneously with the rest of the family (spouses, children). Even if you were one of the lucky ones who already had a home office (or went through the renovation process to achieve it), you would find that personal and work-life limits were non-existent. According to dozens of psychological researchers, this enhances the feeling of stress that we feel by the simultaneous and mandatory management of all relevant obligations. Having a workplace like an office boosts concentration and productivity, even if we choose not to use it permanently as before.
Sometimes you need to lose something to appreciate its value. This is precisely what is happening right now with the so-called “lost time” before a meeting starts and the five-minute unexpected encounters in the hallway or in the kitchen where employees could talk about the TV series they saw last night or a detail about a project that one member did not know. These valuable dozens of small interactions, which helped build trust in a way that is not possible through zoom, ultimately prove to be the reason why even companies that – organizationally and technologically – do not need it are expected to choose for their employees to coexist in the office a few days a week. It makes it even more necessary to redesign these spaces to meet the new health protocols and enhance creativity by creating many small multipurpose meeting & brainstorming rooms.
It is true that, in the short term, working from home boosts productivity as in-house workers end up working longer hours and, virtually, with no precise hours. However, in the long run, the non-existence of a specially designed- office, as a meeting place and coexistence hub of the team, ends up steadily decreasing productivity. Employees start to feel like outside partners, rather than organic parts of the group, showing signs of psychological fatigue from diffusing the boundaries between their personal and work lives.
One of the most heated debates of our time is whether the popular open-space office layout, a trend started by Silicon Valley tech companies in the early 1990s to boost productivity and collaboration, will carry on and in the post-pandemic reality.
Or if, as the most pessimistic experts insist, the need for safer working conditions when (and if) teleworkers return to their old working stations will lead us back to a more traditional layout, with Plexiglas dividers or other corresponding materials called upon to erect “walls” between workers.
The reality is that in addition to the apparent changes, from a health point of view, such as masks, antiseptics on the desks, thorough cleaning of the air conditioners, adequate natural ventilation of the spaces with open windows and sufficient distance between the desks, some structural changes are required for the workplaces to continue to be centres of creativity but also security.
The vast meeting rooms are the only sure “victim”, in terms of architectural layout, of the pandemic. As it is more a prestige choice than that of substance, and given that the post-pandemic reality imposes smaller and more versatile spaces, which favour cooperation and can – if necessary – be used as additional working stations or a place for video calls with customers, the creation of many small meeting rooms should be considered mandatory. Here, interior decoration plays a vital role as each meeting room must have a strategic position within the open space layout and its own distinct personality that will subconsciously dictate its final use.
Given that the consolidation of teleworking means that all and fewer employees will be in the office simultaneously, those who come and whatever days they come must use it to interact effectively with the other team members and exchange ideas and views. This can not be achieved in huge, lifeless meeting rooms but in specially designed common areas, ideally placed near the windows, which leave you with the feeling of small living rooms. After all, the placement of common areas where there is natural light and the relocation of personal offices inside is one of the most crucial changes in open offices’ philosophy for the coming years
We are obviously not referring to those who existed on the streets before the predominance of mobile phones, but special personal offices of the latest generation, made of plexiglass and equipped with their own air conditioning, soundproofing and adequate outlets for all devices, which are strategically placed within the open space layout. These are essentially individual cocoons that allow the employee to work seamlessly and safely. Keeping in touch, however, with the rest of the team. An option that comes to work in addition to creating warm public spaces and enhance their utilization.
It does not matter if you are a start-up or a law firm. The only thing for sure is that no matter what kind of business you are in, you need a thinking tank/dream room in the office, even if this sounds out of place at the moment. It is a specially designed and decorated space that is the exact opposite of a meeting room. You do not enter it carrying dossiers and notes but in a lighter mood to discuss strategy and big picture issues that usually come second as you try to face the immediate challenges of everyday life. It is the crown of community spaces that has proven to contribute decisively to creativity.
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