Not a Number Architects Splits a Halkidiki Stone House into a Tower and a Long Wing Beneath Ancient Olive Trees

Every region with a strong vernacular faces the same problem: the old house is loved, copied and slowly emptied of meaning. In Halkidiki, the rural stone house of thick rubble walls, small openings and timber shutters has become a stock image for second homes along the coast. With Treelithon, Not a Number Architects, the practice led by Ermis Adamantidis and Dominiki Dadatsi, takes that archetype and breaks it into parts. The result is a 200 m² countryside retreat completed in 2025 on a long, narrow plot where the ground slopes gently under mature pines and old olive trees.

What interests us is not the stone, which is expected here, but the decision to stop treating the house as one block. The drawings and photographs show a compact stone tower, a longer and lower wing with a planted roof, and timber porches and pergolas that sit between them and the trees. Taken together, these pieces read less like a villa and more like a small hamlet. That shift in scale allows the architects to keep the old trees in place and lets the slope set the arrangement of the rooms.

A Tower, a Bar and the Slope Between Them

The tower carries the identity of the project. It is a rubble stone volume pierced by square, black-framed windows, and it is tall enough to stand clear of the lawn but too small to look like a statement. Beside it, the long wing stays low, which lets the tower take on the role a dovecote or storehouse might play on an old farm: a vertical marker in a horizontal landscape.

The stepping stones climbing the grass are an important detail. Rather than cutting terraces and retaining walls into the slope, the architects leave most of the ground as overgrown meadow and let you walk across it on loose stones. The site is not flattened into a courtyard; it still behaves like a hillside with buildings set on it.

Stone Below, Plaster and Timber Above

The material layering is straightforward: heavy stone at the base, white plaster and timber above, which follows the logic of the regional type. Where the project departs from it is in the size and movement of the openings. Tall timber shutters fold away from glazed openings, slatted awnings shade the square windows, and a timber canopy shelters a built-in daybed set against the stone.

These are small moves, yet they change how the walls are read. The old stone house protected itself with thick walls and small holes. Treelithon keeps the thickness but allows the timber layer to adjust the openings, so the facade changes through the day as shutters open and hard shadows from the pergola slide across the plaster.

Porches as the Real Living Rooms

If you want to know where life actually happens in this house, look at the porches. Timber beams with reed ceiling panels, a concrete floor, a jasmine-covered stone wall and woven chairs set beside a stone pier make up a vocabulary that is cheap, local and effective in a Mediterranean summer. The open dining pavilion, backed by an oak-panelled wall and framed by cypresses, takes this further by acting as a room without walls.

The living room opens through sliding glass directly onto this covered terrace, so the boundary between inside and outside becomes a matter of degree rather than a hard line. Concrete steps with a simple steel handrail drop beside the stone and under a timber overhang, and the photographs make a point of showing children moving through all of it. That is a fair test for a holiday house, and it passes.

The Stair Against the Stone

Inside, the strongest moment is the stair. Oak treads cantilever off a rough stone wall, with black steel balusters on one side and a slatted timber screen continuing down into the kitchen counter. A concrete ceiling closes the composition. The pairing is deliberate: finely made joinery set against coarse, almost unfinished masonry.

From outside, a large corner window frames the stair, so the circulation doubles as part of the facade. It is a modest gesture of transparency in a building type that traditionally hides its interior, and it signals that the old typology is being questioned rather than copied.

Windows That Frame Trees, Not Views

Most coastal houses in Halkidiki are designed around the sea view. Here the windows are aimed at the trees. A plastered window seat frames a gnarled olive trunk, a square living room window holds another olive beside a cast-iron stove, and a timber desk runs along a corner window like a lookout into the canopy.

The bedrooms follow the same discipline, with square black-framed openings above the bed and smaller timber-framed side windows. Keeping the windows square and deep gives the interiors the calm proportions of the vernacular house, while the precise framing shows that the old olives were treated as clients of the design rather than obstacles to it.

Plans and Drawings

The site plans confirm what the photographs suggest. Two rectangular volumes sit within an angled plot boundary, with a long pool, curving paths and scattered trees filling the space between them. The ground and upper floor plans show the long bar of rooms set beside a large existing tree, joined by a terrace to the smaller tower, while the roof plan shows the planted flat roof of the long wing, the slatted pergola and the lap pool.

The sections are where the slope becomes legible: stepped floors, a sunken pool and stone-clad towers moving down the site. The detail section through the rubble wall, with its window, roller shade and concrete floor edges, makes it clear that the stone acts as a skin around a concrete frame. That is the honest way to build a stone house today, and the drawings do not hide it.

Why This Project Matters

Treelithon offers a useful alternative to the two usual responses to vernacular pressure in Greece: the pastiche villa and the white minimalist box. Not a Number Architects retains the material and proportions of the rural stone house but changes its organisation, splitting one mass into a tower, a wing and a sequence of porches. That one decision preserves the trees, respects the slope and reduces the apparent size of a 200 m² program.

For anyone designing in a landscape with a strong building tradition, the lesson concerns hierarchy. Here the trees come first, the slope second and the house third, and the architecture is better for accepting that order. The details, from the reed ceilings to the cantilevered oak stair, are carefully made but never draw attention away from the olives they frame.

Treelithon, a countryside retreat by Not a Number Architects (Ermis Adamantidis and Dominiki Dadatsi). Location: Halkidiki, Greece. Area: 200 m². Year: 2025. Photography: Alexandra Timpau, Alex Shoots Buildings, Kimberley Powell.

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