As an architect, getting publicity is as easy as building something. Having a beautiful house or shop standing out amongst the same old designs makes heads turn and take notice.

That’s exactly what happened with architect Kalliopi Vakras. As she was designing and building a house for a client in Balwyn, it so happened someone from the Channel 7 show Australia’s Best Houses drove past.

Struck by the modern yet tasteful construction, the show featured the house this month as one of the best in Melbourne.

For Kalliopi and her firm KVA, the honour came as quite a surprise. She didn’t even have a lot of time to dwell on it due to the fact that she’s always working on multiple projects at once.

The Balwyn house characterises Kalliopi’s personal style as an architect, using modern and sleek designs while creating a good balance of homely materials.

“It’s quite a modern style but then I try and use warm materials so it doesn’t look too stark,” she told Neos Kosmos of her signature design style.

“I try and be sensitive and respectful to the site. I do a lot of sustainable designs and look at the orientation, so the living spaces are facing north, not having too many large windows facing west which is the hot side and also looking at using sustainable materials.”

Having such a careful eye for reusing materials and opening floor plans to the elements has always kept her in demand.
The house in Balwyn featured ingenious privacy shades that kept the neighbours eyes away while giving the residents enough of a view and enables the sun to shine through.

“I designed a perforated metal screen,” she describes.

“I designed the pattern and each individual hole and it was calculated to the fact that the privacy screens were only up to 1.7 metres high.

“When you’re below 1.7 metres you can’t see the neighbours through the holes but as you get higher the holes get bigger so that when people are inside the house they can look out to the sky and they get more light coming in.”

The metal screen idea opened up the interior design to more options and created a more light filled living space without encroaching on privacy that many house designs have failed to achieve.

Her ideas and style, she says, come from a long love of travelling.

“We travelled a lot when we were kids so we got to see lots of different cities and places and I was always interested in design,” she says.

“My parents would always have home magazines around the house and I’ve always been creative, I’ve always drawn and made things.”

Establishing her architecture firm in 2009, her clientèle has varied, and away from her house designs, she’s also dabbled in designing for the retail sector.
Her design for the frozen yoghurt chain, Frozen by Thousand Blessings, created a space that made the product shine.

The Scandinavian looking design that centred around lots of recycled timber and black and white feature ceilings made the bright coloured toppings for the yoghurt stand out.

Her design aesthetic in the retail sector always looks towards making the product look more impressive and shies away from gimmicky or flashy interior design.

The Greek Australian is now lucky enough to be getting clients that give her free reign over design, and amazingly has had a couple of clients give her no budget limitations.

At the moment she’s designing a house in Portsea with those unlimited parameters and last year she was able to create a house from scratch without the panic of blowing a budget.

“A concrete ‘leaf’ house I designed was my largest,” she reveals about the project.

“I had an unlimited budget, the client had a brief about how many bedrooms he wanted and what sort of living spaces he wanted but in terms of the design I had unlimited design freedom.”

It’s not hard to see that every single project she has secured has come from word of mouth. She’s already juggling about eight projects and expects more to come in the year.

For more information visit www.kvaarch.com/