Boulouki is a collective of architects, engineers, and heritage professionals dedicated to revitalising traditional craftsmanship for contemporary construction needs. The name “Boulouki,” meaning “gaggle” in Greek, evokes the historic travelling companies of builders and craftspeople and reflects our itinerant, collaborative, and hands-on approach. Active throughout Greece since 2018, we operate as a civil non-profit company committed to renewing building culture grounded in traditional knowledge and sustainable practices.
We focus on hands-on education, sustainable architecture, and cultural landscape management, constructing meaningful projects for communities in need. Our work fosters collaboration among craftspeople, local communities, and a global network of young professionals.
Our projects concentrate on heritage sites in remote mountainous and island regions. We organise participatory restoration projects that integrate practical training programmes: apprenticeships and workshops, where experienced craftspeople train students and professionals from architecture and related fields.
Education is central to Boulouki and guided by three core principles: hands-on, itinerant, and interdisciplinary. Training programmes are based on real construction or restoration projects and adapted to the specific material, cultural, and environmental characteristics of each place. The aim is to create an inclusive learning process that brings together craftspeople, young professionals, students, academics, and local community members.
Boulouki’s educational formats include three main strands. Apprenticeships provide intensive, paid training lasting 3 to 8 weeks, the longest structured programs of their kind nationally, where participants work directly on active sites under close mentorship. These programs deepen traditional and sustainable construction skills, encourage peer learning, and prioritise local participants to foster regional knowledge continuity. Apprentices are hired with competitive national salaries, full insurance, and with a strong commitment to gender balance, providing reskilling opportunities especially for those facing barriers to education and employment.
Workshops are shorter (3 to 12 days), open to a broader audience including students, researchers, and enthusiasts. They combine practical sessions with theoretical seminars, field visits, and community activities, often in partnership with academic and institutional organisations.
Community engagement and learning is integral to all our activities. Alongside apprenticeships and workshops, we organise guided walks, talks, lectures, and local festivities that encourage intergenerational dialogue and collective heritage stewardship.
Boulouki was honoured with the Europa Nostra Award in Education, Training, and Skills, recognising our sustained contribution to hands-on learning and transmission of traditional building knowledge in Greece since 2018.
Boulouki _ Iason Athanasiadis
Our journey began in the mountainous region of Tzoumerka, sparked by the 2015 collapse of the historic Plaka Bridge. While the restoration of the monument itself initiated broad public discourse, it also became the catalyst for Boulouki’s founding team to take action, beginning with the restoration of the cobbled path leading to the bridge as their first initiative. What started as a collective and symbolic intervention soon grew into a broader vision: to revitalise the almost-forgotten “stone art legacy” and reconnect local communities with the knowledge embedded in their built environment.
Since then, our approach has combined hands-on, participatory work and training with an engaging public programme of cultural activities. We expanded this method to other parts of Greece, repeatedly crossing the mountains of Epirus, from Tzoumerka to Zagori, Konitsa, and across the border to Albania, and southward to islands such as Paros, Ios, Santorini, and Therasia.
To date, Boulouki has trained hundreds of participants through numerous workshops and apprenticeships. Working closely with small communities, and often co-organising with local authorities, Boulouki’s work is grassroots and supported by private foundations in Greece and abroad, as well as public bodies including the Ministry of Culture, the Technical Chamber of Greece.
The knowledge and practices of traditional building techniques are at high risk, as the current regulatory and institutional framework offers little protection, and they remain largely absent from both the educational and professional fields in Greece. This urgency is further intensified by the negative impacts of excessive tourism, commodification of heritage landscapes, carbon-intensive construction methods, and unregulated building sprawl, especially in island regions.
Boulouki’s work responds to that pressing need. The gradual disappearance of traditional know-how also affects the social fabric of local communities, weakening cohesion and depriving them of sustainable, circular solutions. Key elements of our work, such as land terraces, dry stone structures, and traditional water management infrastructure, hold significant value in responding to the climate crisis, especially in mountainous and island areas. Equally important is the socioeconomic dimension: our approach actively promotes skills development and capacity building, inclusion, and the creation of collaborative networks between local communities and both national and international actors.
Boulouki_Yorgos Kyvernitis
We advocate for traditional building techniques and materials as a vibrant, highly productive body of knowledge towards a more sustainable and environmentally responsible building culture. We reclaim this knowledge not only as an invaluable part of intangible cultural heritage but also as a viable, equitable alternative that can inform and improve modern construction and engineering practices.
Boulouki’s team includes about 15 core collaborators, along with experienced craftspeople who act as tutors. Each project typically involves 2–3 team members managing the site, 2–4 craftspeople, and a few volunteers or interns working intensively on location for about a month. Other team members support logistics, fundraising, and communications. Operating in remote areas presents challenges, from complex logistics to demographic decline and aging populations, which can limit local engagement. To address this, we work closely with local authorities, schools, and cooperatives. We also encounter some hesitation around sustainable building and social entrepreneurship, which we approach through dialogue, awareness-raising, and active community involvement.
Boulouki was awarded overall for its educational work in this specific category, but one project that particularly stood out to the jury was Under the Landscape. Taking place in the near-abandoned cave settlement of Agrilia on Therasia, the project combined research, hands-on restoration, and inclusive education to tackle cultural and environmental challenges. At its heart was the revival of traditional building techniques using local ‘theran earth,’ supported by scientific study and collaboration with craftspeople, artists, and scholars. The project exemplified how vernacular knowledge can inspire innovation and promote sustainable development, offering a replicable model of community-based heritage practice.
Boulouki’s educational practice stands apart in its commitment to learning through making, in real environments, with real materials, and within real communities. It moves beyond conventional training formats, to create immersive, site-specific experiences where theory and practice are inseparable. Education is approached as a collective process of discovery, which is rooted in place, guided by the rhythm of craft, and enriched by interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue. What makes this approach distinct is its emphasis on the lived experience of building. Learning through the body, through hands and tools, through soil, stone, and lime. Traditional techniques are not treated as static subjects of study, but as evolving practices that gain meaning when activated in the field, in collaboration with craftspeople and local knowledge holders. Beyond technical skills, this approach fosters cultural sensitivity, ecological awareness, and a strong sense of shared responsibility, equipping participants to think critically and act with care.
As Boulouki continues to grow, the team is establishing a permanent base in the mountainous region of Epirus. Since 2022, a participatory restoration has been underway at a former primary school, granted by the Municipality of Central Tzoumerka. Set to begin regular programming in 2026, it will become Greece’s first Research and Training Centre for Traditional and Sustainable Building.