Perma | MOLD architects

“At Perma, the site’s own materials are returned to the earth, creating an inhabitable landscape.”
— Iliana Kerestetzi, founder of MOLD Architects

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Perma is a five-residence retreat set into a rocky north-facing slope on Serifos island, Greece.

The project is ultimately conceived as a measured piece of terrain made inhabitable — an orchestrated collage of materials, textures, views and voids drawn from the landscape itself, where architecture frames the site’s most essential qualities and turns them into an intimate experience of dwelling. 

A concrete grid acts as the main ordering device. It is not used to impose abstraction on the landscape, but to hold together its different elements. The grid is strict yet poetic — filled with earth, water, stone, sunlight, reeds and void. Through architecture, these materials become tangible: defined by edges, given scale, and brought closer to the body. 

This porous structure is characterized by a sense of enclosure and openness at once. Its three-dimensional grid defines protected, inward spaces that remain visually connected to the sea, the sky, and the surrounding terrain. These open rooms offer shelter without isolation, gathering light, shadow, air, and vegetation into intimate places of retreat within the larger landscape.

Beyond a poetic intention to bring the elements and materials of the place closer to human experience, this approach also became a very real construction principle. The stone used in the project comes from the excavation itself, while the remaining excavated material was reused across the broad horizontal terraces. The floors and built-in furnishings were cast on site by local craftsmen, rainwater is collected and reused for irrigation, and the planted roofs are cultivated with edible species. The materials of the site are therefore recycled into the architecture itself, forming inhabitable spaces anchored to the ground. 

Architectural Design: Mold Architects – Iliana Kerestetzi
Leading architect: Iliana Kerestetzi

Design Team: Stefanos Maniatis, Maria Vrettou, Konstantinos Vlachoulis

Structural Engineer: Technodynamics

Mechanical Engineer: TEAM M-H

Lighting Design: IFI

Construction: Mold architects &  Aris Sfikas

Photography: Giorgos Sfakianakis
Photographer’s Website / IG:  giorgossfakianakis.com  /  @g_sfakianakis

Video Credits: Giorgos Sfakianakis (director, cinematography), Constantinos Varotsos (cinematography), Dimitris Gkrintzos (editor – colourist), music: Dagure – Blacksky Pathfinder