AKATSIA

The plot is a limestone plateau thirty kilometres south-west of Odesa: flat, treeless except for one oak, the sea two hundred metres behind it and the steppe running inland as far as the eye carries. There is nothing to hide behind and nothing to lean on.

So the house turns its back on the water. The glazed side, the terrace and the pool all face inland, where the light is even and the wind is broken by the building itself. The sea gets one opening: a square cut clean through the stone block at the east end.

The walls are sawn coquina from the seam under the city, the same stone old Odesa is built from and the same stone the catacombs are cut out of. It came from a quarry eleven kilometres away.