To Save Their Family Home on a Greek Island, a Couple Import a Prefab

The Kasabalis family has deep roots on Zakynthos, one of the largest Greek islands in the Ionian Sea. They’ve lived there for generations, and many of them still live near the land that’s been in the family’s hands for over a century. Katie Kasabalis left Greece in 2005 to study architecture in the United States, but she found her way back after she moved to London in 2019 with her husband, Darius Woo, with whom she founded the design studio Kasawoo. Now just a short flight from Zakynthos, the couple realized having their own place on the family property might help make the most of their summer visits to the island.

They planned to update a 1950s house that Katie’s grandmother had lived in before she moved out in the ’90s. Local builders had a different idea: They wanted to knock it down, pour a thick concrete foundation, and start from scratch. It’s a familiar story on Zakynthos: The demands of overtourism have leveled much of the island’s agricultural splendor for private pools and vacation rentals. For Katie and Darius, this was a complete nonstarter: "My grandma lived in that house," Katie says. "My mother grew up there, and me and my brother used to go there in the summer.

The house is rich in rustic charm, with wooden shutters and aging plaster walls made of sand from local beaches. This technique is specific to Zakynthos, a way to rebuild quickly after earthquakes, but is a vanishingly rare tradition. To drown the site in concrete would betray the house’s history.

"In our practice, we ask ourselves, What does lightness mean in architecture?" Darius says. On Zakynthos, that meant treating the Kasabalis family’s land with respect: preserving the house, protecting the surrounding vineyard, and leaving as much of the land as possible as it has been for generations.