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Katerina Tsigarida	Primitive hut of 2000	Mount Pelion, Greece	December 1999
The primitive hut has haunted Western architecture for centuries. This is its latest embodiment. Click on image to view larger version in new window
None of us could avoid being moved by what we were instructed by its architect to call ‘the primitive hut of 2000’. A huge rock spur points out from Mount Pelion to the sea. On it was a little stone shack among the olive groves: a place in which the fruits were gathered and pressed in autumn. It has been transformed by discreetly adding new work, creating a small complex of little structures; covered terraces, verandahs, stone benches and tables. The old hut was converted as a guest house. The new building is a simple rectangle with a big terrace on the short face, overlooking the sea beyond the cliff edge. The Abbé Laugier would not perhaps have approved of the form, but he could scarcely refrain from applauding the result, for it takes its nature from the site itself, and indeed is made of its stones, using immemorial craft skills, which here, most strangely today, have been deployed with great care and skill. We were all touched by the simple and noble quality of the spaces. We knew the hut was in Greece and felt that Odysseus could have come home to it. Architect Katerina Tsigarida