The powerful shape of the Residences expresses the suppression of the applied order upon the occupants and categorizes, not only in hierarchical order of the inhabitants, but also their needs and functions within the cells.
The individual cubical like parts of a honey comb minimalizes the space of living quarters and separates the activities from private to communal, by distinction of use. The supportive and service oriented spaces are all outside the main body, separated by use.
The rural form of the Residences and its formal displacement among the main volume and the way the supportive volumes are positioned indicate the aspect of verticality, of “space”. People lived in “corridor” spaces that forced them to base their lives on various filtering systems; exterior, communal, private, supportive (kitchen – storage – toilet).
The spirit of the occupants though, couldn’t be suppressed by the forced and near totalitarian arrangement of living quarters.
People reacted to these conditions by their enlarging the volumes and supportive spaces for their own needs or by breaking the walls and setting their own limits of the essence of the neighborhood, both in the exterior porches for filtering new information and contract with neighbors and in the backyards by joining space for communal activities, separated from the public.
The specific quarters have been chosen accidentally because the path joining the mining museum and the stables passes through them. This interesting volume brings to surface the imprints that had been left behind by the occupants. It is seen as a section through time as if time has been frozen. Thus it becomes a passage through the homes/ of the mine workers exposing their way of life and keeping the visitor in touch with the processes of life in the quarters.
Some of the units house a photo museum from that time period and the offices for the whole Kiprianos quarters.