As in fairy tales, so in natural world of the seabed, there is exaggeration and extreme differences in size. The small invertebrates, the well-known “snails” that engaged in research (gastropods and bivalve mollusks), have shells that from 5 mm can reach up to about 1 meter. By losing their shell, they are looking for another one. Sometimes it gets injured, so it changes shape and becomes now a “remnant”- shell.

 The fragmentation of a shell in combination with the earthquake of 2017 that struck the traditional settlement of Vrisa, Lesvos, is what basically shaped the course of research and ultimately the design of this dissertation. Specifically, the village was deserted and most of the residents moved to hotels in the nearby resort - and recently developed tourism - settlement, in Vatera. In one of the earthquake-stricken houses, shells were found coming from this beach, while the wider area (Polychnitou) has excavated shell fossils as paleontological findings. The place where we focus and the island of Lesvos, are characterized equally: on the one hand for their ruins as traces of the past (towers, castles), for the exchange of populations (refugee) and on the other for the exemplary climate of euphoria. Thus, after a comparison was made between damaged shells - damaged houses, the synthesis of the results followed.

 The choice and purpose was in an amphitheater, a key point of Vateron-Vrisa, to design temporary accommodation (shelters) and free wellness areas as tourist attractions but also as a temporary solution to the practical and mental needs of Vrisa‘s villagers, that were created by the earthquake.

 The building design is obtained through the approximate capture of broken shells and follows some basic principles in relation to them: maintaining their true proportions, respect for the organic nature of a shell, their adaptive position in relation to the ground and the emergence of fragility. . The design of the surrounding area, also adopts elements from the shells (spiral arrangements) respects the natural landscape and visitors offering flexibility in the ascents maintaining the sloping ground (creeping creep) In relation to the settlement of Vrisa, the “commemorative design” maintains the curved streets and the low building and incorporates in its decoration elements from this traditional village.

 In essence, the present work composes design features from two different worlds (the human and the snail microcosm) with the common destruction of their home, to create a new Whole…