In the old village of Chora, on Sikinos, a small stone house built before 1955 sits on a plot of barely one hundred square meters, between narrow lanes and the walls of its neighbors. A low wooden gate and a whitewashed parapet open onto the courtyard, the threshold between the island’s alleys and the life of the house.

The house is made of two volumes of different height, both covered with traditional flat roofs. The project set out to keep them as they were found: the stone walls, the size and position of the openings, the niche carved into the masonry and the old wood-fired oven, now the heart of the kitchen.

During the works, a large arch was found concealed within a partition wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. In agreement with the Ephorate of Antiquities, we decided to return the building to its original layout, removing the partition and opening the two rooms into a single space. The arch has become the defining element of the house: it frames the view from the kitchen to the living room and the courtyard, and gives the interior its depth and its rhythm.

The lower volume holds a bedroom with a small study and, in the adjoining room, the bathroom. Built-in furniture, rendered like the walls, completes the stone shell without competing with it.

The roofs were rebuilt with the same care. The layers of earth and seaweed were removed, while the schist slabs and the wooden beams that had carried them for decades were kept and left visible from below. A new external stair, in the traditional manner, leads to the roof terrace and the view over the Aegean. Panelled wooden shutters, painted as close as possible to their original green, complete a house that adapts to contemporary living without losing the measure of the island.