After travelling extensively over 5 continents, Chris originally thought he would open a backpacker’s hostel in Costa Rica and perhaps later he would build a place of his own somewhere outside of town in a more natural setting. What happened though is that he found Kabak Valley in southern Turkey and purchased a small piece of land and began building there.

Starting from scratch he began building a kitchen, a toilet and a first bungalow. He designed the kitchen to have two completely open, arched walls and on one side of the roof he built it so it dipped and rose again at the other end creating a wave effect. The whole 20 sq. meter kitchen was cut by hand using a small hand saw. Even the massive supporting poles were knotched using that saw.

For water, he ran a hose to two different sources, one 300 meters away and the other 700 meters away straight up the mountain. All of this was done mostly by himself. The toilet became known as the most beautiful in Kabak and little by little guests began arriving and before he knew it his dream was coming true.

Every year he built new structures creating curved decks, the towering bar and Turkey’s first earthbag structures until finally he felt that there was no more space to continue creating interesting and natural structures. The tourism part became more of a means to an end and little by little he realized that he had a lot of creative ideas that he wanted to realize and Kabak was not the place for it.

After leaving Kabak he did a couple of small projects for his soon to be wife, Sultan and a good friend Kubilay. Both of those works are here on this website. But in the meantime he began conceiving of various plans for a wonderful project. Out of the different designs he chose the one that would become The Beyler House set just outside of the quiet village of Beyler, in the hills east of Seferihisar.

Here he was able to construct something that was natural in design and both organic and mainstream in materials. Something that both diehard eco friendly people could love but far enough away from the rustic nature of Reflections that everyone would appreciate.

Currently, while waiting for the sale of The Beyler House, Chris, Sultan and Kayra Ocean are in Dalyan for the summer awaiting the start of the next project.