Sustainable Living

To quote from Kathy's journal entry for June 12, 1974, the day we first arrived on the land with a friend for a prolonged stay: ". . . it was 5 o'clock, and the place looked far wilder and harsher than we had remembered. There wasn't a spot of level ground on which to pitch a tent. Tough, thorny bushes covered everything. We managed to clear away the bushes from two spots and put up our tents. . ."

The site for these first tents was the flattest spot of ground, to minimize leveling, and close to the beach and its adjoining rocks, which quickly became centers of activity: points of entry and exit from the land by boat; places to go swimming and speargun fishing; places to clean the fish we caught; and places to wash everything -- ourselves, our clothes, our dishes, and so on.

Thus, the choice for tent sites followed the time-honored (primitive, one may say) pattern of human settlement close to water. It followed quite naturally that a year later, in 1975, the first polyhedral structure, was erected on the site occupied by the first tents. 

All other decisions for building and landscaping follow from that initial decision, with each new addition responding to the man-made environment that preceded it, as well as to the constraints of topography and geology. 

This is the incremental, organic, unplanned type of growth evident in the island villages, a growth unguided by a master plan. It is this process of growth that helps lend complexity to the compound and, together with the human scale inherent in the polyhedral geometry, endow it with the visual qualities of a Cycladic village. While the design of the buildings themselves is quite sophisticated, the planning of their placement follows vernacular thinking.

From the very beginning, we decided that any improvements we made to living on our isolated site would contribute not only to our comfort but would also maintain our independence, and would respect our environment. Thus: