Smart Athens Renovation Shows How to Honour 1930s Modernist Heritage Without Museum-ifying It.

Here’s a great example of how to do heritage renovation properly. XT 97 Interwar Modern in central Athens gets the balance right between preserving history and creating spaces people want to live in today.

Built in the 1930s by A. Siagas, this building was ahead of its time—think early brutalism with a distinctly Greek twist. The original design was clever: two independent maisonettes stacked both vertically and horizontally, a housing solution that was pure Athens innovation. But over the years, conservative renovations chipped away at Siagas’s bold vision, softening the modernist edges and muddling the interior logic.

Enter architect Lara Vartzioti, who clearly understood the assignment. Her restoration keeps the building’s best surviving bits while ditching the rigid floor plans for flexible spaces that work for how we live now.

The moves she made are genuinely smart. That timber staircase that used to serve just one apartment is now a shared space that brings the building together. The internal passageway connecting both homes has become an “alley” that pulls the street right into the building—it’s a brilliant way to blur indoor and outdoor boundaries.

Something Old, Something Borrowed & Something New: Athens Apartment by Oikonomakis Siampakoulis Architects.

Maintaining existing elements and having he kitchen become the focal point in the program were key drivers behind the design strategy of this 70s apartment.

Things get interesting in the material play. The original terrazzo floors stay put, but now they’re framed by new epoxy flooring that makes them pop. It’s subtle but effective. Up top, the new penthouse is like an architectural X-ray—all the building’s columns extend up through it, creating this complex space that shows off the structural bones. It’s the kind of insider detail that architecture nerds will love.

The practical stuff was no joke either. We’re talking about a 1930s building that needed completely new plumbing, electrical, and sewage connections. The new windows look nearly identical to the originals but actually meet today’s energy standards—that’s the kind of behind-the-scenes work that makes heritage projects succeed.

What makes this renovation stand out is Vartzioti’s restraint. She didn’t try to make a statement or impose her own vision. Instead, she found the building’s natural rhythm and worked with it. No flashy interventions, no look-at-me moments—just thoughtful decisions that let the architecture breathe again.

It’s proof that you can respect modernist heritage without turning it into a museum piece.

Celebration of Subtleties: Zacharitsa Live-Work Apartment in Athens by Molonglo & Royffe Flynn.

Small and flexible, the home-work-shop hybrid, housed within a typical post-war polykatoikia, was developed by Molonglo in collaboration with London-based Royffe Flynn.

[Images courtesy of Lara Vartzioti. Photography by Dimitris Kleanthis.]