Adaptive Reuse of Adobe Refugee Dwellings in Attica, Greece, as a Social Housing, Bioclimatic Upgrading and Heritage Preservation

Abstract

The climate crisis, housing precarity, and the loss of everyday architectural heritage are converging challenges in Mediterranean cities. This article investigates the adaptive reuse of early twentieth-century adobe refugee dwellings in Nea Ionia and Kaisariani, neighborhoods of Attica, Greece, as an integrated social, environmental, and cultural strategy. Historical documentation, urban-morphological analysis, field observations, building survey data, material assessment, and design-based microclimatic analysis were combined to evaluate compatible restoration and bioclimatic upgrades as alternatives to demolition and conventional energy retrofit practices, with the main aim of preserving an important part of Greek history and architecture. The study develops a replicable qualitative assessment framework that identifies how existing adobe envelopes, compact layouts, courtyards, thresholds, vegetated pergolas, and low-water evaporative cooling may support low-carbon housing reuse. The results clarify the current preservation conditions and reuse potential of the selected case-study fragments, showing that adobe dwellings can preserve embodied material value, retain thermal mass and hygroscopic regulation, and support social housing when repaired with compatible, low-impact techniques. The article argues that the reuse of adobe refugee dwellings can function as a distributed urban strategy for housing provision, heritage continuity, and microclimatic adaptation. Its main contribution is a transferable analytical framework for assessing overlooked earthen housing stocks in dense Mediterranean contexts. The study argues that adaptive reuse can serve simultaneously as a means of social housing, a mechanism for optimizing the microclimate, and a means of preserving the tangible and intangible heritage of Greek adobe buildings that have been standing for over 100 years. This position extends circular construction debates by prioritizing non-demolition and direct reuse while preserving an important period of history.