Guides to living slower in rural Europe. Architects. House types. Places.
Architects
France has a group of architects building houses from stone, wood and concrete, shaped by natural landscapes. A working list of the studios worth knowing, some already in our directory, some new finds worth watching.
13 July 2026
Places
Paros is the sweet spot of the Cyclades: the whitewashed towns and turquoise water you came for, without the crowds of Mykonos or Santorini. A practical guide to where to eat, drink, swim and stay, the best beaches and villages, and how to get there, when to go and how many days you need.
8 July 2026
House Types
In Sweden, the summer house is almost a birthright. A guide to the sommarstuga and its Scandinavian cousins. What is a summer house, where it originated, where people go, and how to get one of your own.
6 July 2026
Places
Santa Gertrudis is a small village in the middle of Ibiza, away from the beaches and clubs, known for its food, its shops and its slow afternoons on a car-free square. A simple guide to where to eat, drink, shop and stay.
1 July 2026
Places
Tavira is the quiet heart of the eastern Algarve, a town of churches and salt pans on the Gilão river, with some of the best seafood in Portugal and the island beaches of the Ria Formosa on its doorstep.
29 June 2026
Places
Tinos is one of the quieter Cyclades, a short ferry from Mykonos but a world away in feeling, with marble villages, wild beaches and some of the best food in the Aegean. This is the practical guide: where to actually eat, drink, swim and stay, from the seafood at Thalassaki to the design hotels above the coast, with one bit of sightseeing at the end.
24 June 2026
Places
Gotland is Sweden's largest island, a slab of limestone in the Baltic where people come to slow down. This is a simple, nature-first guide: the sea stacks and quiet beaches worth seeking out, a few farm tables and bakeries worth booking, and a handful of design-led places to stay, from a hotel built on an old limestone quarry to Sweden's first boutique farmstay.
22 June 2026
Places
Slow travel is a way of travelling that trades quick visits for going deeper. Fewer places, longer stays, and a trip that moves at the pace of the people who live there. This guide explains what slow travel is, where the idea came from, how to do it well, and why a single beautiful base in one region beats a checklist of cities you barely remember.
17 June 2026
Architects
Portugal's contemporary architecture works close to the land, and its best studios still build with the regional material under their feet. This guide gathers twelve of them, from internationally published names to small regional practices, spanning the entire country. Most restore ruins, reuse old farm buildings, or set new houses quietly against the landscape.
15 June 2026
House Types
A finca is a rural Spanish property, traditionally a working farm, set on agricultural land with a thick-walled, terracotta-roofed building at its centre. This guide explains the typology, etymology, architectural features, regional variations, and contemporary restoration tradition.
11 June 2026
Architects
Twelve contemporary architecture studios working in or near Mallorca, gathered for their work with the island's rural vernacular tradition. From OHLAB's international-profile practice in Palma to Munarq's literal use of traditional ballast walls in Binissalem, the selection favours studios engaged with Mallorcan construction techniques and rural landscapes over coastal modernist villas.
9 June 2026