It is a hotel complex, on the island of Milos, designed by the architect Fotini Xyrafi.

The complex is situated on a wonderful volcanic hillside, facing the sea, where an exceptional beauty of rocks, colors and seabed is met.

The complex has been designed with buildings’ arrays: arrays of independent small houses and arrays of suites with a private pool each.

The complex also features a central restaurant building, a large common pool and a main office building.

The complex should – on the outside views – uphold the traditional Cycladic architecture and remind of an old, pre-existing, Cycladic village.

On the other hand, internally, the design is required to be very modern, contemporary, minimal, with open spaces, without intermediate obstacles, to refer to high structural technology and modern architecture.

Construction should be carried out in a very short space of time.

The hotel should have a high durability – since it is in a highly aggressive environment next to the seaside -, it should be completely earthquake resistant and safe – as it is founded on volcanic soil – and it should also require small maintenance costs.

We proposed a modern composite structure, with a lightweight steel frame, which will be assembled very shortly at all structures.

This lightweight steel skeleton will form precisely the geometry of the buildings and then the walls will be made of shotcrete, insulation and dry construction – leaving free space for the passage of the E / M installations.

At the points where the architectural design requires masonry, the masonry will be combined with the shotcrete in a load-bearing, reinforced masonry wall.

Internal partitioning is done in dry construction.

The slabs are a composite structure from trapezoidal corrugated steel sheet and concrete.

In this way the buildings feature an external “sculptural plasticity”, since the shotcrete follows the architectural curves in order to render the view of a Cycladic village.

Internally, with the “strict” geometry given by dry construction, they succeed the desired result of minimal architecture with large, free spaces.

The durability is achieved, since the outer building cell is immune to the corrosive effects of the environment.

Finally, the short construction time is achieved – on the one hand – with the assembly of a prefabricated steel frame and – on the other hand – with the masonry configuration simultaneously with the completion of the internal arrangements in other buildings of the complex.

The project has not yet been implemented, but the method remains an example for other projects, new or existing.