Piers Taylor’s holiday home for his family in Corfu takes root within its rugged terrain, paying homage to the area’s local building practices.
Photos
Jim Stephenson
In the unassuming hinterlands on the Greek island of Corfu, a new concrete structure can be seen emerging from the landscape. Topped by a corrugated sheet metal roof, the building echoes the rustic simplicity of shepherds’ huts and timeworn structures that scatter the surrounding olive groves.
The building is in fact a holiday home, designed by Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio as a holiday home for his growing family. Its visual ambiguity is deliberate.
I like this sense that if somebody came upon this building, they wouldn’t quite know what it was,” says Taylor in a video on the project. (Scroll to the bottom to watch it in full).
“Whether it was a, a storehouse or a, a workshop or just a building for processing olives… I wanted something that was not a domestic building with the trappings of domestication.”
The house’s concrete form is dictated by environmental constraints, standing resilient against the ever-present risks of earthquakes and wildfires. Reinforced with limestone aggregate, the concrete walls appear as if drawn from the earth itself, forming a structure that feels less like a building and more like a natural formation. Simplicity was paramount: the house’s rooms are left unadorned, their plain surfaces fulfilling the roles of both structure and furniture. Above, a shaded space with a corrugated roof and red rebar trusses nods to the modest means and skills that underpin the island’s construction heritage.
“I didn’t want any glass. I just wanted screens that were mesh screens, because that’s what you can get from the local builder’s merchant that act as shutters. I wanted that sense of impermanence and improvisation,” adds Taylor.
Eschewing glass entirely, the openings are framed with sliding galvanised weldmesh screens, functional and straightforward, matched by insect screens and plastic curtains sourced from local suppliers.
Taylor was also keen to show the mark of local construction. Horizontal and vertical formwork patterns, from plywood sheets to coarser timbers, trace the hands-on, resourceful approach that shaped the house. ‘Mistakes’ remain untouched, recorded in the concrete as a testament to the builders’ process. Marks left by seasonal elements — seed pods and olive stones embedded in the concrete — become a part of the building’s fabric, telling the story of its creation through each layer of material.
The building’s top floor acts as the main point of entry to the home – open to the rear with only stairs acting as the threshold to formally entering the building. Topped only by the metal roof above, this area is the home’s primary social space and serves as a kitchen-diner area complemented by open-air views to the sea.
Watch a video on the project below:
Additional images
Source: Architecture Today
