A rough and ready architecture, designed to respond to the local climate and natural elements, built with what is available, with what already exists. Designed by Invisible Studio for the family of architect Piers Taylor, House in an Olive Grove stands on a small Greek island still marked by 17th-century olive groves, small-scale agriculture, and improvised constructions that evolve slowly over time.
Taylor has been visiting the island since the 1970s, and his deep connection with the place guided the entire project. The aim was to create a house that directly expresses the local building skills, humble materials, and artisanal construction methods — in stark contrast to the polished and anonymous aesthetics of the tourist villas that have transformed the Greek landscape over the past fifty years.
The building takes the form of a simple volume in reinforced concrete, mixed with local limestone aggregate and cast using improvised formwork: sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical, made of reused boards or plywood panels. The result is a material patchwork that records process over project, action over intention.
Inside, the house contains minimal spaces: essential rooms made entirely of concrete — walls, floors, ceilings, kitchen, and part of the furniture — gathered beneath a large open-air living area on the roof, sheltered by a corrugated metal covering supported by red oxide-treated rebar trusses. It is here that the most social dimension of domestic life takes place, in direct dialogue with the landscape.
There is no glass, only sliding galvanized weldmesh screens, separate insect screens, and plastic curtains: inexpensive, locally available materials, more selected than designed. No fences, no attempt to tame the surrounding nature. Every “mistake” is left visible: traces of seeds, stones, seasons, and local hands that shaped the house following their own rhythm and means.
The climate-responsive, context-sensitive approach gives rise to an architecture that becomes landscape. Yet more than a compositional model, what emerges here is an ethical stance: to build with what is at hand, without pretension, allowing architecture to be a consequence rather than an assertion.
CREDITS
Project: House in an Olive Grove
Architects: Invisible Studio
Location: Greece
Year: 2024
Photographs: Jim Stephenson
