Cabanon Concrete Retreat

Set outside the small village of Dermitziana in the Kissamos region of western Crete, surrounded by endless olive trees and the ear-piercing sound of summer cicadas, Cabanon Concrete Retreat sits in a landscape made for slow living, where the hot midday sun invites a doze, meals stretch across the balcony as the sun sets over Crete, the village soundscape replaces five-star amenities, and the Milky Way is visible overhead at night.

Created by Antonis, a Greek artist, and Sofia, a Swedish art curator, as an extension of their artistic work, the two concrete cabins are inspired by Le Cabanon, the minimal retreat the architect Le Corbusier built for himself on the Côte d'Azur using his Modulor system of human proportions, designed for minimum dimensions and maximum physical and spiritual comfort, what he called a scale of Mediterranean balance. Each cabin accommodates two with an optional third, indoors and outdoors merging into a single calming space, and the whole property can be booked together, shaped throughout by the owners' shared belief in genius loci and the idea that a site is never merely a physical entity but always part of its history and context.