Laguna Coast Resort opened in May 2025 on the hill of Stelida, on the west coast of Naxos — 21 suites and villas, sleeping 73, above 480 acres of wetland and lagoon that draw flamingos and wild ducks. It is the built centrepiece of a plan for that coast held by the Laguna Coast Foundation, the non-profit research institute the environmental engineer Antonis Pittaras founded with a team of scientists.
The setting
Stelida rises 1.5 kilometres from Chora, and the resort holds 1.5 kilometres of coastline beneath it. To the north lies Manto, an islet of 27 acres, and the sea it stands in is the Laguna that gives the place its name. This is not a remote headland. The seasonal wetlands of Agios Prokopios begin 650 metres to the southwest and the island’s summer runs on from there — close enough to walk to, far enough that the wetland behind the resort is still a wetland.
The provenance
The ground carries an unusually long record. Stelida is a chert source and a stone tool workshop, the oldest known site in the Cyclades, worked from at least 250,000 years ago until roughly 9,000, before either pottery or metal. The 270,000 stone tools recovered so far attest to Neanderthals and to Homo sapiens on the same hill. The Laguna Coast Foundation, which commissioned the house, has built its programme around that record and around the lagoon below it, and the four accommodation categories are named accordingly: Neanderthal Hills, Cedar Forest, Flamingo Valley, Golden Reef. The Foundation’s own account gives 270,000 years ago as the age of the stone tools; it is the number of them. The Foundation calls the wider undertaking the largest regeneration project in the Cyclades. Its own architects call it one of the most significant, which is the more careful sentence.
The design
Modulus Architecture took the commission with the shells already decided. A building permit for six new buildings and one existing structure was in place when the practice of Vassiliki Dermitzaki, Katerina Striki-Magiaki and Katerina Tsitsiva began work, so they kept the approved envelopes and spent their effort on the interiors and on every outdoor space. Shallow water features of organic shape were set through the grounds, the largest at the heart of the site between three of the accommodation buildings, another beside the restaurant. Each is filled with desalinated seawater, which spares the island’s own supply and cools the complex passively. Perforated clay brick screens close the rear courtyards, and no path on the site has a step in it. Construction ran from October 2023 to April 2025, 18 months, executed by local crews in island marble, stone and oak.
The rooms
The 21 keys divide in two. The sea-facing apartments have small private pools of their own; the rest are arranged around the central water feature, their terraces set so that they appear to float above it. Entrances sit at the rear of each building, away from the sea, which is a small planning decision with a large consequence — nothing of the view is spent before a guest is inside the room. Together they sleep 73.
The table
TÂMA looks out to the Aegean and to the Temple of Apollo at Chora, with a wood-fired oven and a shared event space in the open air beside it. The resort calls the room a dining ritual and not a restaurant, a phrase about intention; the menu is a separate question. The produce is Naxian and the cook is named Elpida Morfouli.
The stewardship
The Foundation’s stated target is a zero carbon footprint, and solar generation is the means it names. The medium-voltage lines through the Laguna area were put underground with HEDNO, the distribution network operator, to keep them clear of migratory birds. The desalination that fills the water features exists to spare the island’s water. Further out, the Foundation works with Amazon Web Services on a Naxos Smart Island programme, and the masterplan’s carbon target is dated 2030. That date is the honest part of it. A zero-carbon building is a certificate somebody holds; a zero-carbon plan for 2030 is a promise.
A house whose ground has been worked for 250,000 years is under no obligation to be modest, and this one is not. What can eventually be judged is narrower than what is claimed: whether the lagoon still holds its flamingos in 2030, and whether the buried cables and the desalinated water turn out to have been the reason. The building is finished. The argument it makes is not.
For those who would wake above a wetland rather than a marina, the introduction is ours to make.
