Bodrum Villa

A stone villa on the Bodrum peninsula, designed by Artu Architecture. The construction is the old kind — load-bearing masonry, deep walls, vaulted ceilings turned in brick and stone — and it remains the project that most shaped how the studio thinks about building.

Vaulted work cannot be corrected after the fact. The geometry either resolves or it does not, and the mason who sets the springing line is making a commitment the whole room will inherit. Working through that kind of construction, drawing in hand, is an education no site trailer teaches.

The villa sits early in the studio’s history and far from Toronto, but the lesson carried home: read the drawings until you understand not just what the architect wants, but why — then build exactly that.