Twenty-five years ago, I fell in love with vernacular architecture. With its quiet intelligence and its extraordinary inventiveness. With how, all across the world, people have always found deeply fitting ways to build – adapting to place and climate not through force, but through understanding. Building with what is available. Ventilating without machines. Insulating without plastic foams. Working with the climate, not against it.
Project Name: Villa Fano
Studio Name: AMORV
Location: Wageningen, Netherlands
Status: Built
Image Credits: Stijn Poelstra
That insight became the foundation of our design philosophy: CONTEXT – CULTURE – CONCEPT. First, listen to the place (context). Then, learn from its traditions (Culture). Only then, begin to design (concept).
If you’re facing a ventilation challenge, don’t start with air conditioning – study how people have built for centuries in hot, humid Indonesia. If insulation is your problem, look to 200-year-old homes in Siberia. That mindset became our compass and it earned us the ©GREEN GOOD DESIGN AWARD – the green sibling of the world’s oldest design prize.
Villa Fano is the embodiment of this approach. It is more than a home. More than a boutique hotel. It is an ecological manifesto. A tribute to nature. A living structure built with local wisdom, hands, and heart.
The project is located on the island of Nosy Be, Madagascar. From the very beginning, we worked in close dialogue with the client – without whom this project would never have taken shape. As we say: A good project needs a great architect. A brilliant project needs a great client!
Together, we envisioned something that would honour the place, respect tradition, and open a path to the future. We spoke with local craftsmen, walked the site, and listened – carefully. That’s how we learned about a sacred tree standing at the heart of the land. It couldn’t be moved. So we designed around it. We also discovered that every construction on the island is blessed by a local shaman. Of course, we embraced that ritual too.
The building consists of five freestanding structures resting on a raised platform, all united beneath a vast protective roof. The form evokes the shell of a turtle – Fano in Malagasy. More than metaphor, the turtle is a local symbol of protection, stillness, and time. The building seems to nestle into the land rather than dominate it.
Instead of imported Western systems – air-conditioning units, synthetic insulation, aluminium frames – we chose materials from the island. Over 85% of the building is made from locally sourced timber, stone, clay, and plant fibres. And instead of sealing the house off with glass, we designed it to breathe.
Thanks to the shape of the roof and the orientation of the volumes, air moves naturally through the building. The design uses the Bernoulli effect – where air flows from high to low pressure zones – and the Venturi effect, which accelerates the airflow in narrow passages. These principles, common in nature and aviation, allow the house to remain cool even in tropical heat. Custom-made wooden shutters let in wind but block direct sun. The result: no glass, no air conditioning, no mosquitoes. Just constant cooling airflow.
Villa Fano is completely off-grid. There is no connection to water, power, or sewage infrastructure – because there simply is no infrastructure. And so the house had to become its own ecosystem. Rainwater is collected and filtered, wastewater is purified onsite, and electricity is generated by the sun.
What emerged is a house that lives and breathes with its environment. A building that is as much grown as it is built. Not as an architectural object, but as a gesture of respect- for the land, for its people, and for the old ways of building that have stood the test of time.
