Beneath the Walnut Tree / Eressos, Lesbos

Some houses are built into a landscape. Others seem to have grown from it.

 

At the foot of a massive rock, beneath an old walnut tree, the Walnut Tree House sits quietly in the wild Kampos of Eressos. Behind it, the mountain rises almost vertically. In front, the land opens wide towards the valley, the bay of Eressos and the Aegean beyond.

 

It is a small stone house between two worlds - the protection and permanence of the rock behind, and the vast openness of the landscape ahead.

 

When we found it, time seemed to have stopped. The house had withdrawn into itself, almost forgotten beneath the walnut tree. To awaken it meant first listening to what was already there: the stone, the proportions, the silence, the landscape.

 

But the direction is forward.

 

At the heart of the project lies the strength of simplicity. Just as the silence of this place can feel almost roaring, its simplicity has a presence of its own. Nothing is added for effect. No decoration, no unnecessary complexity - only what is essential.

 

Stone. Wood. Glass. Shade. Light.

 

The old stone house against the rock continues to protect inwardly, creating shelter and intimacy. At the same time, the glass kitchen opens the house towards the garden and the landscape. Beneath the pergola and the great walnut tree, the outside becomes another room of the house - while the interior becomes part of the landscape.

 

Architecture no longer ends at the walls.

 

Old stone meets light structures and contemporary space. The past remains present, not as nostalgia, but as the ground from which something new can emerge.

 

A modest house between shelter and horizon, between the timeless rock and the wildness of the Kampos.

 

Ancient in its foundations, uncompromisingly contemporary in its spirit.

 

Welcome to the Walnut Tree House.