Meraki Studios Is a New Site-Responsive Resort in Crete

"Berlin-based, Danish architect Sigurd Larsen always looks to counterbalance the uniformity of ever-pervasive modernism with vernacularity: the climate, history, and material culture of a specific location. For him, the relationship between the constructed environment and human experience is shaped by much more than just form and function. "We look at how people built before modern machinery," Larsen is quoted saying in the foreword to an upcoming monograph. This isn't the half-hearted reverse engineering of so-called "place-making"-an ever-popular marketing term with less and less meaning."

"For the complex-an almost pixel-like massing of stacked cubes-the architect harnessed the stonework know-how endemic to the area. "We quickly realized that the locals excel at [this trade], but there's little expertise in carpentry because they don't have a wood industry," Larsen notes. "There used to be trees all over Greece, but as early as the Stone Age they were cut down and never returned. This informed what we could work with locally." Necessity-and adaptation-are truly the mothers of innovation."

Berlin-based Danish architect Sigurd Larsen prioritizes vernacular responses—climate, history, and local material culture—to balance uniform modernism. His craft-led method emphasizes traditional building techniques and adaptation to local skills. At Meraki Studios retreat in southern Crete the design responds to sunlight, wind, views, and quality of interior and exterior space. The project exploits endemic stonework and compensates for a regional lack of carpentry caused by historical deforestation. Stone infill fills a 3D-grid concrete shell that nestles into the terraced hillside, producing a constructed-rock appearance. Thick stone walls provide thermal mass and naturally cool interior spaces.

Read at Design Milk