After years of working abroad Tsabikos decided to return home to Athens in 2019. Rather than rent in the congested city centre he realised he could refurbish a storage room in the undercroft of his parents' house provided he found a design that gave him independence and a sense of pride. Our task was to banish the idea of a basement as a boxy and cold space. Instead we imagined and then built a series of small comfortable rooms as an attractive subterranean sequence. We used a tiled mosaic ceiling to reflect precious light onto a polished cement floor; this extends through every room joining gentle level changes and continuing up to the mid height of the walls to highlight handmade curved skirting and architraves. The result is a subtly sophisticated Athenian flat quietly tucked into the humdrum of the suburbs.