Visionaries
Nikos Karaflos
Founders-Dexamenes Seaside Hotel
Amaliada, Peloponnese, Greece
Dexamenes was once an abandoned wine factory on the Peloponnesian coastline. Nikos Karaflos grew up nearby and had known the building since childhood, when it was already a landmark of the region’s past. Rather than replace it, he chose to preserve its history and allow the architecture to tell the story.
The Story of Nikos Karaflos
High in the fir forests of Arcadia stands a former mountain sanatorium that remained abandoned for decades before Stratis Batagias began imagining what it could become.
Watch the FilmOrigin
Grew up in a village near Kourouta, western Peloponnese. Raised in a small Greek Orthodox community where life was slow and seasonal. His family summers were spent on this coastline, within sight of the abandoned wine factory he would eventually save.
Former Life
Electrical engineering and computer science. Then lighting and multimedia. At 18 he won a prize from the President of the Hellenic Republic for academic excellence. He joined K-Studio architects in a senior role and stayed until 2016. The year after, he started building Dexamenes.
The Turning Point
His family bought the derelict wine factory at auction in 2003 to stop it being demolished. It sat there for years while Nikos figured out what it could become. He contacted K-Studio, the architects he already knew from the inside, and the conversion began.
Obsession
He calls himself an Imagineer, imagination plus engineering. He had a piece of original 1920s concrete shipped to a specialist company so they could match the exact colour and aggregate for any new surfaces. Nothing was allowed to look like it didn't belong.
The Detail
Mornings are breakfast with his two children and his wife. Then he walks to the hotel. He still lives locally, still shops at the open market in Amaliada every Saturday morning, and his signature cocktail at dex.Lab is infused with herbs grown in the hotel's own landscape.
What They Preserved
Nothing demolished. The original wine tank walls, the steel silos in the courtyard, the industrial layout, the patina on every surface. Even the furniture was custom-made by local craftsmen rather than imported. The only thing shipped in was the mattresses.
I’m a local. I was born and raised in this region and I always knew the history of this place. It was a landmark for the area. When my family bought the abandoned winery, I felt it was my responsibility to preserve the buildings and let them tell their story rather than replace them.
The Story of Dexamenes Seaside Hotel
Equally important was the land itself. The forest had grown around the building during its eighty years of abandonment, wrapping it in branches and roots. Stratis refused to cut a single tree. Today the rooms sit close to the trunks, as if the forest is embracing the walls. Manna exists because he wanted to create a place where guests could feel the stillness he felt as a child. A place where nature is part of the architecture and where luxury is measured by clarity, quiet and belonging.
Equally important was the land itself. The forest had grown around the building during its eighty years of abandonment, wrapping it in branches and roots. Stratis refused to cut a single tree. Today the rooms sit close to the trunks, as if the forest is embracing the walls. Manna exists because he wanted to create a place where guests could feel the stillness he felt as a child. A place where nature is part of the architecture and where luxury is measured by clarity, quiet and belonging.
“I remember walking through the abandoned wine tanks and feeling the building still had a quiet presence, even after years of silence.”
Nikos’s connection to the Peloponnesian coast runs deeper than memory, shaped by the summers he spent near the shoreline watching the wine factory slowly fade into silence. When he returned as an adult, the light on the sea, the salt in the air and the stillness surrounding the abandoned tanks felt strangely familiar, as if the building had simply been waiting for someone who understood it. Restoring Dexamenes became less about creating a hotel and more about protecting the spirit of the place, allowing the concrete tanks, the long industrial lines and the rhythm of the coast to remain visible. The project became a quiet return to the landscape that had always stayed with him, where architecture, history and the presence of the sea continue to shape the calm atmosphere that defines this remote stretch of shoreline.
