Bert Pieters and Yves Drieghe left their home in Brussels to spend a year abroad in 2020, with no idea where they’d end up. Over the previous decade, the couple had built a successful branding agency with offices in Belgium and Holland from scratch, but the pandemic left them wanting for a change—something different, something new.

Within a year, they sold their agency and decided to set up a new life on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. As they browsed properties away from the island’s main tourist strips, they discovered a farmhouse in the Los Valles region and started to get excited. They’d been searching for somewhere that felt local and cozy, and a space they could make their own—and the charming country home was set on an expansive plot of land that had been handed down for at least three generations.

“The outside of the house has plenty of character, but the inside was like a blank page, and we could do whatever we wanted with it,” Bert explains. “It was the mixture of the location, which pushed us into farming, and the fact that we could play around with the interior while maintaining as many of the older features as possible.”

The house had been unoccupied for years, and the couple’s vision for transforming it into an artists’ retreat only took shape once they moved in and began acclimatizing to life on Lanzarote. The weather proved to be particularly challenging: The sun can be grueling and cruel year-round, and gales of wind rattle through their land in the occasional storm. “We got to experience the house and everything you have to take into account when you start a project on an island like this,” Bert says.

They began by dividing the existing 2,150-square-foot farmhouse into five suites, each with its own kitchen, bathroom, and windows with shutters. Accents in each suite connect the spaces to Lanzarote’s natural beauty: You’ll find the blues of the endless sky on table legs and kitchen cabinetry, the greens of the rolling hills on accent walls, the orange of the evening sun spills across curtains , and the black of Lanzarote’s volcanic soil envelops the bedroom in the La Astróloga suite in a thick, dark wash. The couple rounded out the retreat, which they call Hektor, with furniture and artworks they brought over from Belgium and the Netherlands, and with pieces from visiting artists as well.

Communal space—an exhibition hall, enclosed patio, and larger shared kitchen—is organized around the home’s central axis. The layout draws from a local architectural vernacular in which houses are built around a central open-air patio that rests above a cistern of cool water. They enclosed Hektor’s patio for additional temperature regulation, and to create a natural flow for guests: As they move through Hektor’s entrance and into the exhibition space, they can gather in the patio, or head to the shared kitchen for a bite to eat. When it’s time to cool down, there’s a raised pool which is sheltered from strong winds and midday sun.

A team of local contractors were the key to Hektor’s success, and they outfitted the existing structure to accommodate the couple’s zero-waste approach to water. “Everyone knew before we started working that our main goal was to keep all the water,” Yves says. Conservation is essential on an island with just two weeks of rainfall each year, and Bert and Yves see it as their duty to minimize their impact on their newfound homeland. “We didn’t want to waste any water, because we’re bringing people to the island—three artists at a time, and maybe their partners as guests—and because the farm needs water, too.”

The result is a stunning example of circularity in action: The couple grow watermelons, peppers, eggplants, and dozens of herbs and vegetables on their land to feed themselves and their guests. Any water used in the house is filtered (guests are offered special soaps on arrival) and redirected to the farming zone, and excess crops are fed to the couple’s sheep and donkeys, who supply fertilizer for the soil—and plenty of entertainment for guests as well.

Even after two years on the Canary Islands, Yves and Bert are still finding new things to love about Lanzarote. “It is a brutal island, and either you hate it or you love it,” Bert says. “But if you love it, you accept that you need years to discover it.”

Learn more about Hektor here.

Related Reading:

Long Abandoned, a 1930s House in the Canary Islands Is Now a Feast of Charm

An Abandoned Warehouse Makes Way For a Breezy Ibiza Retreat

Project Credits:

Designers: Yves Drieghe and Bert Pieters

Technical Architect: Rafael Barbadillo

Builder/General Contractor: Construcciones Florin

Appears In

In the Canary Islands, an Artist Residency Blooms in an Abandoned Farmhouse