Skopelos Island
Three new homes perched over the harbour
Three new detached houses and landscaping, cut into a steep hillside site overlooking the town and main harbour of Skopelos Island, Greece. Built using local materials such as stone and sweet chestnut timber, with sustainable design including rainwater collection, heat pumps and solar thermal energy.
The houses face north over the main harbour.
The plaster to the internal walls is naturally breathable, helping improve indoor air quality and prevent the build up of mould or dampness.
This is because traditional lime plasters are hygroscopic, which helps to regulate internal humidity by absorbing high concentrations of moisture in the air, and then releasing this on dryer spells.
The plaster has been prepared in the traditional way on site by hand-mixing: 2 parts white marble dust, 1 part lime, and a small part white cement.
The marble dust is used as a filler, and sourced from waste material. Lime and gypsum have been used as binders in historical mortars since ancient times. The cement is used to help the mixture set, and includes limestone, clay and gypsum amongst its ingredients.
Being handmade plaster, throughout history in different regions others have experimented with ingredients such as rye flour, rice gluten, burnt gypsum, pork lard, curdled milk, fig juice, albumen, and malt to fatten the plaster, retard its setting and to regulate shrinking and cracking.
The houses are cut into the hillside rock.
Landscaping has been a major component of the project, creating terraces, access roads and paths to link the houses.
Traditional brick cornices, timber lintels and slate roofs reinforce the local character. The interiors mix traditional with modern.
The houses have been designed to ensure comfortable and energy-efficient interiors both during the excessive heat of the summer and during the cold winter months when it has been known to snow.
The excavation necessary to build on this steep site provides a natural earth shelter to the south elevation, where the sun is hottest, and an abundant supply of stone which is then worked by hand and re-used to clad the outside of the buildings and retaining walls.
Thick walls of over half a metre provide thermal mass through the use of the concrete frame and floor slabs, built to withstand seismic loads, alongside the stone cladding to the outside, as well as efficient insulation.
The site is off the water grid, therefore all rainwater is collected and stored in basement tanks for re-use.
In the summer, large north-facing windows open up to take advantage of prevailing winds, and high level cross-vents maximise natural ventilation.
In the winter, underfloor heating creates a comfortable environment, an air source heat pump minimises power consumption of the heating, and an efficient wood-burning fireplace can be used to boost the heat of the main living area.
A key challenge was the solid rock which lies beneath a thin layer of existing top soil.
