Floor Plans

The last bit to bring this up to date is to mention the architect. We were back at the cob course build site in June to help finish off the workshop project, and Stamatina (our host) introduced us to a local architect. His name is Konstantinos Grapsas and he most recently did a research degree at Cambridge on environmental architecture - he specialises in passive solar heating and cooling (designing the building to retain or resist heat depending on the time of year) and photovoltaic solutions. Anyway, we found his ideas very exciting, and very in tune with what we wanted to achieve. Apparently he is an advisor to the EU on such matters, so we're in exalted company.

We can't get planning permission without structural calculations - we're on the most active seismic fault in the world -so we knew we were going to need professional help, but we had no idea Lefkada would provide just such a useful contact.

So I've been obsessively drawing floor plans to give Konstantine a starting point. Apparently most beginning cob builders make their projects too large, and therefore too expensive and time and labour consuming. So I've tried to put everything we need inside a footprint of 100 sq m.



There are only 4 rooms we really need: kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room, and if storage is properly organised, those rooms don't have to be very big, so I've also included a pantry, boot store, linen store and laundry/garden room.

There's a bit of a low ceilinged attic, for guests willing to stoop and to climb steep stairs, which will have the best view in the house over the trees to the sea and islands to the east.

The house faces south to maximise solar gain, but the bedroom and kitchen look east. I'm hoping to have a raised deck outside the bedroom for breakfasts with glimpses of the sea through the olive trees.