What is toichos project?

The toichos project is an ambitious interdisciplinary initiative, that begun on the island of Tinos, April to May 2025, with the participation of six prominent architects/designers from France: Marlon Bagnou Beido, Ophelie Dozat, Anna Saint Pierre, Côme Rolin, Olivier Thomas, and Mathias Palazzi. It is a research and creative project that is first implemented through research, creation, and exhibition on site in Tinos, followed by an exhibition in Athens and the creation of a collective publication.

Tinos

Why the island of Tinos?

We chose Tinos for the Toichos Project because it embodies, with striking clarity, the dialogue between resilience and abandonment, heritage and transformation. Here, dry-stone walls trace centuries of labor, while unfinished concrete structures mark more recent ruptures. The island holds both memory and interruption within the same horizon. Its strong winds, exposed geology, and living craft traditions—particularly in marble and stone—create a landscape where material is never neutral. Tinos offered not just a site, but a condition: a place where reuse, repair, and reimagining could unfold in direct conversation with history, climate, and community.

Context

Tinos rises in the northeastern Cyclades like a weathered stone adrift in the Aegean—197 square kilometers of terraces, ridges, and wind-carved horizons, the fourth largest island of the archipelago. Its climate is Mediterranean in name, yet the relentless northern winds sculpt a harsher character, pressing against its slopes and whitening its winters, while sheltered valleys cradle pockets of calm and cultivation. Three great natural embraces—Livada, Kolibithra, and Panormos—open toward the sea, each with its own temperament of sand, rock, and light.

The island breathes through its biodiversity: five species of snakes glide through its dry grasses and stone walls—Ohia, the viper; Ophios, large and bold near inhabited areas; Abelousa; Saltari; and Lafitis, once regarded by farmers as a quiet blessing in the fields. Beyond the uncultivable heights of Tskinias, Patela, and Prophet Elias in Exo Meria, the land was once meticulously worked. Terraces stitched the hillsides, villages grew from stone, and abundant natural springs sustained both crops and communities. Agriculture shaped not only the terrain but a culture of endurance and craft.

The rural architecture, with its low, cube-shaped houses and dry stone walls, faithfully follows the contours of the slopes, holding back the soil and preserving the memory of cultivation. This layout reveals the inhabitants’ expertise in managing the landscape and adapting human activity to natural conditions. Tinos island has been the host to an unbelievable wealth of dry stone structures to the point that it has been called the hand crafted island due to the way terraces stretch out like curvy stone steps all over the island.

Dry Stone

Why is the dry-stone technique so important?

Art of dry stone construction – building with stone without connective material

Tinos is a land where stone is so plentiful, the people who inhabit it utilize this versatile resource to survive. Having lived alongside these stones over many generations, they became great stone masons and crafters. These stones, found in fields, were moved in order to easily cultivate the soil. Thus, after being lifted for cultivation, the stones were used to build fences to divide the land in smaller parcels, creating the terraces / parastes / pezoules / skales. From the hard matter of stone, the Tinian craftsman created an intangible culture. One of the fullest expressions of this culture was dry stone technique.

The terraces function as a spatial record of cultivation and repetition, preserving the memory of labor within the landscape. They function as minimal but decisive interventions, delimiting space not in terms of domination but of coexistence, revealing a practice of habitation that constantly negotiates the relationship between man and land.

USES:

• Everyday use – reuse the stones to build and rebuild
• Sustaining – used to retain water and sustain the soil in terraces
• Road and exposed – to create paths and walls as boundaries between fields
• Building – high duration / used for many building types such as homes or stables 

The art of dry stone construction has been recognized globally by UNESCO as it was  Inscribed in 2024 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.