Location: Serifos Island, Greece

Design Team: MOLD Architects

Area: 270 m²

Year: 2026

Photography: Giorgos Sfakianakis

Design Features:PERMA Serifos Retreat is set into a rocky north-facing slope on Serifos Island, Greece. Designed by MOLD Architects, the project consists of five residences and is conceived less as a freestanding building than as a measured piece of terrain made habitable, embedded within the island's rugged ground, sea views and dry vegetation.

The architects describe the project through a concrete grid that acts as the main ordering device. Rather than imposing abstraction on the landscape, the grid gathers the site's earth, water, stone, sunlight, reeds, voids and views into a legible spatial structure. Through its edges and proportions, these elements are given scale and brought closer to the body.

The resulting structure is both enclosed and open. Its three-dimensional grid defines protected inward spaces while maintaining visual connections to the sea, sky and surrounding terrain. Stone walls, concrete beams, shallow pools, planted roofs and shaded terraces form open rooms that provide shelter while collecting light, shadow, air and vegetation into intimate places of retreat.

The material strategy is not only poetic but also constructive. Stone used in the project comes from the excavation itself, while remaining excavated material was reused across the broad horizontal terraces. Floors and built-in furnishings were cast on site by local craftspeople, rainwater is collected and reused for irrigation, and edible species are cultivated on planted roofs. The materials of the site are therefore recycled into the architecture.

PERMA Serifos Retreat draws its strength from this restrained act of embedding. It does not treat the island landscape as scenery to be consumed; instead, slope, stone, sea air, water, shadow and vegetation become part of the architectural order. Beyond hospitality comfort, the project offers a grounded way of dwelling within Serifos's raw topography.

Design Team:MOLD Architects is an Athens-based practice founded and led by architect Iliana Kerestetzi. The studio has developed a body of work closely tied to Greek island landscapes, subterranean spatial logic, rocky sites and forms of retreat living. Its projects often begin from section, material extraction, cave-like atmospheres and framed relationships to landscape.

For PERMA Serifos Retreat, Iliana Kerestetzi served as lead architect and lead team member, with Stefanos Maniatis, Maria Vrettou and Konstantinos Vlachoulis on the design team. Structural engineering was by Technodynamics, MEP by TEAM M-H, lighting by IFI, and construction by Aris Sfikas, bringing together architecture, structure, material logic and site-based construction.