Casa Lacus
Nicosia | Cyprus
Casa Lacus is conceived as a complementary intervention within a plot already occupied by the family’s main residence. For this four-member household, the brief was centered on the need for an in-between space: a semi-outdoor core, open to the landscape, capable of extending the domestic realm while mediating the threshold between private living and the urban condition.
The project is situated in the district of Aglantzia, the highest suburb of Nicosia. Perched among hills and gentle slopes, the site opens its views toward the Pentadaktylos range, while the neighborhood itself is renowned for its generous greenery — with the Athalassa and Academy parks acting as key landmarks. Despite its relatively high population density, development in this area remains porous, allowing nature to breathe and engage in dialogue with the built environment.
The architectural concept was driven by the idea of a semi-outdoor gesture: a light canopy, slightly lifted from the ground, seemingly defying gravity while allowing vegetation to weave through and around it. It operates at once as a shading device and a locus of social life, offering a place of rest, leisure, and everyday inhabitation, particularly during the summer months.
Its architectural language is both sculptural and restrained: clean linear elements are reflected in the landscape by day and night, set in dialogue with the elongated swimming pool that unfolds northwards, parallel to the canopy.
The southern façade remains closed, shielding the space from direct solar exposure and extending the hours of shade. Linear apertures in the roof allow the prevailing north-western breezes to pass through, enhancing natural ventilation and thermal comfort.
The structure is carefully positioned so as to shade part of the pool, creating subtle variations of light and coolness. At night, the artificial illumination of the canopy and the surrounding landscape converges with the ambient glow of the city, composing a shifting palette of colors and reflections across the water’s surface.
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Vegetation here is not a backdrop but an active component of the experience: a private garden that transforms into a place for play, exercise, and retreat. Casa Lacus thus emerges as an interstitial landscape — an architecture that does not impose itself, but converses with nature and the city alike. It proposes an alternative mode of dwelling, one that tempers the intensity of the urban rhythm without demanding withdrawal from it.