Some buildings change purpose without quite forgetting what they used to be. O Fournos, named after the Greek word for oven and once the neighbourhood bakery of its owner’s grandfather, has been transformed into an island home while keeping traces of its former life firmly in place. The renovation works with what survived, pairing the simplicity of Cycladic architecture with materials and details inherited from the bakery. Original stone walls have been restored and left visible, while bricks once used in the wood-fired oven now form a large interior arch. Even the oven’s old cast-iron door has found a second use, incorporated into a doorway as a small reminder of the building’s working years. Outside, the former side entrance has become a courtyard that deliberately retains something of its old, ruin-like character. Its perimeter walls were rebuilt using traditional dry-stone techniques, setting rough local stone against clean whitewashed surfaces and recalling the unfussy yards found across the Greek islands. The result feels less like a complete reinvention and more like a continuation. A family bakery becoming a family home, with its past still visible in the walls, doorways and stones.
O Fournos gives a former island bakery new life as a Cycladic home
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