House in an Olive Grove

The structure of the building is one move. The site is in an earthquake zone, fire danger zone, and there is limited other material to build with other than reinforced concrete using local limestone aggregate – making formwork is a key local skill. There are simple rooms contained within this main volume, made entirely from concrete (walls, floors, ceilings, kitchen, some furniture) and on top, a large shaded living space under a corrugated roof supported on red oxide reinforcement bar trusses, again, drawing very much on the skills and materials available locally. There is no glass – only galvanised weldmesh sliding screens, separate sliding insect screens, and plastic curtains – using cheap – vernacular - materials available from the hardware store in the village. There are no designer inflections, nothing precious, nothing rarefied, and nothing (much) that suggests this is (capital A) Architecture. There is no gate, no fence, no taming of the landscape around it. All of the ‘mistakes’ are evident – or rather, the processes and decisions made by the locals who made the building. The organisation of the formwork is eccentric, but has a logic and a language based around the materials they had, and the sequence in which they worked. Sometimes the formwork is horizonal, sometimes vertical, sometimes rough-hewn board that has been used many.