There are cabins built for weekends, and then there’s Camp Meeker. Designed by Renée del Gaudio Architecture and completed in 2026, this 2,100-square-foot retreat in Allenspark, Colorado sits at the base of Mt. Meeker — a landscape a single family has returned to for nearly a century. The cabin wasn’t designed to impress. It was designed to endure.

The brief was rooted in something rare in contemporary architecture: restraint with purpose. Rather than loading the home with the usual domestic conveniences, the architects stripped the program back entirely. No television. No dishwasher. No microwave. What remains is exactly what a mountain retreat should be — a place that places the landscape first and forces you to look at it.

Designer: Renée del Gaudio Architecture

Structurally, the cabin is built for the realities of its environment. A concrete base and steel frame anchor the building to the site, while ironwood siding wraps the exterior in a material chosen specifically for fire resistance — a non-negotiable in Colorado’s high-elevation terrain. The steep metal roof does double duty: it deflects winter winds and gains enough height to accommodate a sleeping loft above the main floor, designated as the children’s quarters, giving the whole structure a playful, camp-like energy that its name earns honestly.

Inside, Renée del Gaudio made one decisive material call and committed to it completely. Rustic-grade oak covers the floors, walls, and ceilings in a continuous warm finish that collapses the boundary between surfaces. The main living area is organized around a central fireplace, flanked by vaulted timber ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that pull the surrounding alpine scenery directly into the room. Two double bedrooms and a single bedroom anchor one end of the main floor, each connected to a large outdoor terrace. Above, a rooftop deck offers unobstructed views of the mountain — built equally for afternoon sun and sleeping under open sky.

What makes Camp Meeker genuinely forward-looking is what’s hidden beneath it. A geothermal system draws on the earth’s stable temperature to heat and cool the cabin, replacing conventional fuel-based systems and bringing the home’s day-to-day operational carbon to zero. It’s sustainability framed not as a feature, but as a baseline expectation.

The architects describe it as a model for the next century of cabin design in the region. Looking at it, that doesn’t feel like overreach. Camp Meeker isn’t a trophy house dressed in rustic materials. It’s a building that understands exactly what it is, where it is, and who it’s for — and builds every decision around that clarity.

The post This Zero-Carbon Colorado Cabin Was Built for a Family — and the Next Century of Mountain Living first appeared on Yanko Design.

Somewhere between the olive groves and vine rows of Zakynthos, a deep-red timber cabin sits quietly in the Greek countryside, and it’s one of the most considered small structures to come out of Europe this year. The Root Cabin, designed by London-based studio Kasawoo, is a 20-square-metre prefabricated retreat that challenges the very idea of what a holiday home in Greece should look like.

The project is personal. Co-founder Katie Kasabalis owns the land in the village of Vanato, a site that has been in her family for decades and still holds the ruins of her grandmother’s old stone house. Together with co-founder Darius Woo, she set out to build something that felt of the place rather than imposed on it. The result sits at just 2.5 by 8 metres, slipping gently between rows of vines without disrupting the agricultural and historical fabric of the land.

Designer: Kasawoo

Built off-site in Romania and transported to Zakynthos fully prefabricated, the cabin is road-legal and designed to be relocatable, a detail that speaks directly to its low-intervention philosophy. “Nothing is superfluous,” the architects told Dezeen. “The project’s generosity lies in what it refuses to add.” In a part of Greece where sprawling concrete villas are accelerating across the countryside, that kind of restraint is quietly radical.

The exterior is wrapped in deep-red timber planks, a shade drawn from the historic villas of Zakynthos, and topped with a gently angled roofline that echoes the island’s mountainous horizon. It’s a structure that has absorbed its context rather than competed with it. Inside, the atmosphere shifts to something warmer and more immediate. Plywood lines the walls, ceilings, and all built-in furniture, creating a near-seamless, cocoon-like interior in which a bed, compact kitchen, sofa, and bookshelves are integrated into the structure.

The layout places the bedroom and bathroom at opposite ends, with a central living space defined by large sliding glass doors that open directly onto the landscape. Red details carry through from the exterior, while the bathroom shifts to soft blue tones, a quiet nod to the Ionian Sea nearby. Objects sourced from Greek makers, including ceramics and textiles, add another layer of local grounding to a space that already feels deeply rooted.

Passive ventilation and operable openings allow the cabin to function off-grid, reinforcing what Kasawoo describes as a “different kind of luxury,” one that measures itself not by square footage or spectacle, but by the quality of what’s been left out.

The post This Architect Built a 20m² Red Cabin on Her Family’s Greek Vineyard — and It’s the Antidote to Every Concrete Villa on the Island first appeared on Yanko Design.