K-Studio is a design practice rooted in Architecture. At the heart of our practice lies a commitment to crafting unique and immersive architectural experiences across diverse scales, typologies, and environments. Their clearly contextual approach has evolved to prioritise seamless integration with surroundings, often reflecting local culture and natural elements. They aim for our works to deeply connect with their settings, appearing as if they have always belonged.
They create crafted architectural experiences that are informed by tradition, enriched by materiality and inspired by contemporary life.
To do so requires a thorough understanding of the circumstances and parameters that will enable a project to thrive naturally.
Through refinement and collaboration, raw ideas and materials evolve into something entirely new, reflecting the essence of creativity and shared effort.
A design practice informed and inspired by people. Throughout their design process they work collaboratively with highly experienced and knowledgeable teams to enrich and expand our services and results.
Sampling knowledge from others is like sampling different cuisines; it broadens your palate.
Beyond various teams of clients, architectural and design related professionals, consultants, etc, they also persist in seeking inspiration in the least predictable sources, believing that design is a mosaic crafted from diverse practices, where inspiration flows freely between not necessarily obvious agents. It thrives on the art of learning from others, and transcending design-related disciplines.
Friday Matters. It seeks to bring design conversations outside of the conventional setting, and infuse them with a convivial atmosphere, complete with a reasonable amount of alcohol.
What are the pursuits and the vehicles of a design process? Who are the key players in defining a project’s direction, and when do those emerge? What makes a design good, beautiful, sophisticated?
By welcoming guests from various disciplines to share their insights and experiences, Friday Matters promotes interdisciplinary exchange, enriching the design community’s perspective. In order to find new ways to communicate our ideas & values, we shift the focus away from our completed works, onto the stories & people behind them. Employing an engaging and interactive format that encourages dialogue and knowledge exchange, we aspire to create a relaxed and informal setting; to foster a sense of community by celebrating the diversity and dynamism of the design field and innovate with the event format to keep discussions lively and engaging, making each gathering unique.
Attempts to blend the intellectual stimulation of a design talk with the social enjoyment of a Friday night out; to initiate a dialogue on some of the most common and burning concerns of creation.
Ultimately, Friday Matters aspires to create a space where design professionals and enthusiasts can come together, share ideas, and enjoy themselves, inspiring and invigorating the design community.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
FRIDAY MATTERS, 10th October 2025
Global or local? Does one have to “fit in” in order to belong? Can a building that stands out from its precedents and surroundings still reflect a local identity? What does locality mean, after all, in the age of globalization?
On the evening of 10th October K-Studio welcomed guests from a range of disciplines to the newly launched Castor Place—a former industrial building adjacent to the port of Piraeus, elegantly transformed into a multi-purpose event space—for a session exploring this recurring axis of their work.
Context, locality and the vernacular are the object of Piers Taylor’s recently published book, “Learning from the local”. What makes architecture belong, respond, continue and maybe challenge the existing, traditional and vernacular paradigm of its location? The overlap in their interest for creative answers to this question has been reason enough to invite the architect, academic and presenter as a guest in dialogue. Introduced by K-Studio’s Creative Director, Giorgos Karampelas, Piers Taylor took the stage to guide the audience through the core arguments of his book, presenting examples of architecture that are deeply responsive to their material, social and ecological context, free from strict aesthetic obligations or nostalgic notions of place.
The session positioned architecture not as a static object, but as a network of relationships — material, climatic, social, and political. Buildings gain meaning through the way they are made, the resources they draw from, and the forms of labour, knowledge, and governance involved. Locality was presented as an active and procedural condition: not a style to imitate but something produced through engagement with place, materials, and community.
Identity, in this context, arises through process. Tradition becomes valuable when reinterpreted, not reproduced; belonging is built slowly through use, maintenance, adaptation, and shared authorship. Architecture was framed as something unfinished by design — open to evolution, expansion, and participation. Incompleteness becomes a strategy, allowing buildings and cities to grow iteratively rather than arrive fully determined. The measure of value shifts from visual authorship to the path a building takes into existence.
By the end of his presentation, Piers and Giorgos opened the discussion to the public, inviting perspectives, disagreements and reflections on the question: How does one operate thoughtfully within the fragile ecosystems of nature and culture? Piers highlighted the importance of working directly with climate and material realities rather than relying on symbolic narratives of culture or heritage. Audience members raised the difficulty of applying these ideas in contexts like Greece, where historic character, aesthetic expectations, and regulation are strongly entrenched. This tension underscored the practical challenge of balancing bottom-up experimentation with established preservation norms.
Rather than proposing resistance, the discussion pointed to negotiation and relational practice — collaborating with local actors, working within constraints, and building trust. Meaningful architecture emerges through dialogue, shared process, and the continuous capacity for place to adapt and belong.
The experience. In order to fully immerse guests into the underlying reflection of the evening, K-Studio teamed up with Odassien (Eleni Tranouli) to shape the experience as a cohesive, holistic whole. Upon their arrival, guests were handed a set of stickers, each of which corresponded to a destination across the globe. The stickers would be individual votes according to everyone’s subjective criterion, to be cast as “appropriate” locations that suit the objects that comprised a curated exhibition. The cabinet of curiosities gathered artefacts from artists and collectives, but also everyday objects and mass-produced products.
As visitors explored each exhibit, the ballots gradually transformed into colourful constellations of imaginary contexts—an exercise in hypothetical adaptation, revealing how instinctively (and how differently) we relate design to context. According to popular vote, a steamer would be most useful in Kyoto, and a woven fan in Tulum. When in Manchester, one should pack their rain boots to cope with the relentless weather, while a plain white T-shirt would see you comfortably through a stay in Vancouver.
A handcrafted basket by Faye Chatzi, specially made for the occasion using revived ancient techniques, with details of hand-spun wool from her sheep and hair from her horses, was rightfully located in its birthplace, Mykonos, and so was a straw hat— most practical against the bright Cycladic sun of the island.
The oriental character of a berber flat-weave from the Soutzoglou Carpets collection was elected to fit a space on the Turkish coast of Bodrum, along with a striped throw by Kimisoo. An iridescent resin vase by Objects of Common Interest seemed to evoke the blown-glass traditions and baroque heritage of Venice. The same verdict was reached for the Vitra stools by Charles and Ray Eames, generously displayed by El Greco Gallery.
Finally, imagination, futurism and a sense of speculative possibility were set ablaze at the encounter with a kimono by Kimisoo x Faye Chatzi, which guests placed—perhaps inevitably—within the unfolding development of The Line in Neom. An orbiting sun, capturing the essence of the elusive nowness and the act of being present- bathed the space in sunset hues, as the evening progressed. The event culminated in a vibrant gathering, with signature cocktails by Metaxa, treats reminiscent of Athenian street food, and a set by DJ Paradisco that carried the night forward.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW – FRIDAY MATTERS by K-Studio & Odassien
With the support of Alumil, El Greco, Kimisoo, Marmyk, Metaxa
Special Guest: Piers Taylor
Photography: Nikoletta Zarifi
Contributors: Objects of Common Interest, Faye Chatzi, Soutzoglou Carpets, Electra Soutzoglou, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, CAN Christina Androulidaki Gallery, Ana Santl Andersen & Nikos Karaflos.
