In the mountainous village of Megalochori in Lesvos, Koukos de lab has found its new home. Right in the heart of this luscious traditional village, an old coffee shop (kafenio) was restored with attention to detail and transformed into a small lab to store the “koukoutsi eco-material” vision. Following the eagerness of its founders for authenticity and locality, the new lab is part of the story – a small hidden gem amongst pine tree forests and dense olive groves that reflects their roots, and aspiration for a better future. As the founders say, “Our novel idea for a new material deriving for the final waste of the olive – a product massively found in the Mediterranean but also in Lesvos- represents our vision of an evolving world that values the environment in which we live. It isn’t only crucial to reduce environmental impact but also to develop a whole new concept that reconsiders eco-waste and reinvents ways of using it also in modern design. We try to move forward with a mantra that everything we design should respect nature and we could not have found a better place to evolve than this small village of 90 inhabitants”.