0224 ELEPHANT AND CASTLE

Elephant & Castle is a two-level hair salon in the center of Athens, conceived as an urban interior landscape with references to the materiality of a public space in the city. Housed within a typical Athenian shell, the interior is transformed into an environment of care and formal repetition.

Trail Practice’s aim was to integrate the space into its existing context, not through mimicry but by setting the new in dialogue with the old. Spatially, this translated into the creation of a dual system: a full-length mirror acting as a diffusion mechanism, and a shelving wall composed of Dionysos marble shelves and white metallic storage units. Between them, the user’s body becomes part of a spatial rhythm that intensifies with every repetition.

The salon’s presence in the city is clearly declared through its storefront, framed in red marble and functioning as a stage-like aperture for the activity taking place inside. This opening acts as a living scene that projects the interior into the city—establishing a reciprocal relationship between public and private, the everyday and the curated.

Inside, the material palette, drawn from the city itself, is organized with restraint. Dionysos marble, metal elements, leather upholstery, and glossy white surfaces compose a neutral backdrop, activated by use. Among them, volumes of color serve both as functional components and as vertical markers of movement and transition, culminating in the vibrant green block that contains the staircase and connects the two levels.

At its core, the design does not seek to illustrate the function of a hair salon, but to embed it within a system of reflectivity and repetition—where care, waiting, and transformation become part of an architectural experience. Elephant & Castle thus operates as an interior landscape, where the body activates a space with its own logic, rhythm, and subtle intensities.