Mikro Horio -- The Little Village
Traditional buildings on Kythnos were small in scale and built of native stone, typically plastered over and whitewashed. They had thick walls, small openings and either flat or pitched and tiled roofs. This method of construction was totally abandoned in the 1950s, and modern buildings follow the National Building Code, which dictates concrete frame and slab with hollow clay tile infill plastered over.
By the late 1970s, new modern buildings on the island began to display elements derived from vernacular sources (such as arches and dove-cote openings) in an attempt to emulate tradition. These elements are cosmetic embellishments of the standard concrete frame construction. They comprise a "neo-traditional" style, which locals call "traditional". The meaning of the word "tradition" is, in this instance, strangely subverted, for many of the style's elements are alien to the island; they have been imported from other parts of the Mediterranean. More recently, allegiance to "tradition" is underscored by dressing buildings in unplastered and unpainted stone, a treatment that in the past was reserved for outlying shepherd huts and goat pens.
Most buildings of the neo-traditional style are large and free-standing, a fact that further removes them from the endearing qualities of established villages: those of intimate human scale and visual complexity. These are the two basic visual qualities that Kathy and Chris Saccopoulos have adopted for the design of their home. The design, based on polyhedral geometry implemented through ferrocement construction, also addresses the difficulty of bringing materials to the site, and the requirements for low cost, thermal comfort and construction by unskilled labor.
They judge the success of their endeavors by the fact that island friends refer to their 140-square-meter home as Mikro Horio, "Little Village."
