Retreat to Move Forward
A 148 square foot getaway on a remote island in the Aegean sea.
“This is the opposite of luxury.”
With his latest conversion project, Greek architect Ioannis Exarchou was not attempting to create a pampered getaway. He took a 100-year-old stable on Tinos, a remote island in the Aegean Sea, and crafted a masterwork of minimalist design.
Exarchou titled his project “Retreat,” even though its size is a spare 148 square feet. Built between 2008 and 2009, Retreat is both psychological and spiritual, a monastic refuge from our garish, plugged-in modern culture. The floors are colored concrete, the walls white plaster. Its effect is not unlike a well-designed cave. When Exarchou speaks of the property’s “amenities,” he’s referring to the most basic of flourishes, like indoor plumbing and a table.
Exarchou also designs furniture, and the interior of Retreat is outfitted with pieces that were built to order. With such minimal square footage, every inch counts. “It’s like being in a boat or other small vessel,” he says.
These days, with hotels and resorts boasting their lack of connectivity, and Silicon Valley-types paying good money to spend weekends without their cell phones, Exarchou’s Retreat is oddly in style. With no WiFi signal, and no electricity for that matter, life is dialed back to its essentials. You get to spend time with your own thoughts, a luxury increasingly in short supply.
“Most people that visit Alonaki [Retreat] are a little uneasy in the first few days,” says the building’s owner, Stratos Xatzigiannakis, “but after a few days they are ‘reborn’ and totally go with its rhythm.”
That rhythm is symbolic as well as literal. Exarchou says the acoustics of Retreat are remarkable, magnifying the slightest sound. A dish being set on a counter, say, or stocking feet scuffling across the floor.
“You can hear everything – the wind, insects outside, things like that,” he says. “It’s also the most accurate way to hear your own voice.”
The exterior is rough and dark, made from local stone and blending in with the surrounding hillside. There’s a view of nearby mountains, but on the surrounding property, don’t expect distractions of a pastoral nature. A small garden is the extent of the greenery. Especially in the summer season, this is rough, dry terrain.
At Retreat, you get to spend time with your own thoughts, a luxury increasingly in short supply.
Entering the space in daytime requires an adjustment. Your eyes have just left the bright glare of bleached earth; inside it’s dim. Exarchou says many people will close their eyes briefly, as an adjustment. “It’s a strange sensation, to go from the bright to the dark, from the outside heat to a place that’s a bit chilly,” he says. “There is a feeling of safeness.”
Exarchou has stayed at his own creation only once – typically it’s either occupied by Xatzigiannakis and his wife, or rented out to quiet-seeking vacationers. It costs about $800 per week in the summer, and significantly less from September to June.
How will you eat? In perhaps his greatest concession to modernity, Exarchou powered the kitchen (as well as the shower) with liquid propane gas. There is a stove and small fridge, not to mention a modest food preparation area.
Exarchou feels that everyone can benefit from leaving it all behind, spending some time at Retreat. In particular, he sees the potential for young children to learn and grow in this type of environment. The only issue is – where would they stay?
“You could fit one or two children in the bed between you and your partner,” he says. “That is a choice you can make.”
Wee ones are probably the only additional guests you’d want (or be able) to accommodate. This is a bespoke space for two. It’s hard to imagine fitting more people. But lest you start to feel claustrophobic, Xatzigiannakis points out that everything is relative.
“If you were from Tokyo, this would feel like more than enough space,” he says. “We’re just used to bigger living areas.” Interestingly, most of Retreat’s renters are from Paris. Xatzigiannakis suspects there may be a cultural draw. He doesn’t think the space’s appeal resonates as strongly among his fellow Greeks.
Lemonade made with summer lemons grown on the island of Tinos.
A basket of produce from Retreat’s small garden.
Fair warning: You will be able to get cell phone service, if you choose to leave your phone on. At this point, just about all of Greece has coverage; you’d be hard-pressed to go truly off the grid.
And though there is currently no electricity, Retreat does have wiring built into the walls. If solar panels were installed at some future point, the space is equipped to go electric. But it’s not happening anytime soon.
“We need to change positions,” says Exarchou. “Leave where we live, find a place where we can rest and rethink what we are doing. That’s where we get inspiration for our lives.”
Top: Every inch of Retreat is designed to maximize space. Here, the compact kitchen area.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Jesse Hirsch, Modern Farmer
September 26, 2014
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.