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Shop below, home above, as in the 1920s: in the walled city of Nicosia, Cyprus, Anastasiou Misseri restore Aeschylou Trikoupi and add only two new forms, both clad in zinc, on its roof.
The corner has a geometry you notice before anything else. Where Aeschylou and Trikoupi streets meet, the block narrows to a point, and the building rounds that apex in a curved front that has made it a landmark on the street since the 1920s. Three storeys and 302 square metres, listed, with tall floor-to-ceiling rooms, windows of several types, and balconies that open north, east and west. From the top floor the whole of Nicosia comes into view.
On the ground floor the old shop returns as a flexible commercial space, two interlocking rooms with a small back-of-house behind them. The mechanical and electrical installations stay on show rather than hidden above a ceiling, "preserving the spatial clarity of the interior while allowing adaptability for future users", as the studio puts it.
The home above is reached by its own side entrance. A timber staircase climbs to the first-floor central hall, off which open the bathrooms, the bedrooms and a reading room; the main living spaces wait at the top, opening to a paved, checkered veranda and a view across the city. The original plan stays as it was, with new services "intricately threaded through the existing fabric of the building", as the studio puts it.
The one assertive move sits on the roof. A lightweight extension lands on the original terrace, linking kitchen and living into a dining room that can open completely to the terrace on each side. Beside it, a small polygonal volume holds an outdoor toilet. Both are wrapped entirely in zinc sheets, a plainly modern skin set against the old masonry, chosen for contrast and for durability.
Anastasiou Misseri, the studio Michalis Anastasiou and Stephanie Misseri founded in 2020, treated everything else as restoration in the older sense of the word. The stone masonry walls were repaired and structurally reinforced, walls and floor slabs rebuilt by their original methods. Timber windows, shutters and doors were brought back and the staircase conserved. In place of the old floor tiles, handmade clay tiles were laid to copy the original patterns, and new timber boards went down only where timber had been before, in the exact direction of the old planks. The "subtle contrast between old and new" the studio keeps naming turns out to be largely a matter of knowing which parts to leave alone.
