Text description provided by the architects. The idea for this guest house in the archipelago of Stockholm was to create a simple housing unit that would work efficiently as an informal and compact vacation dwelling. In order to limit the construction budget, the majority of the house was done in low budget materials such as construction plywood and concrete. A straightforward use of materials that at the same time made for a raw and unpretentious interior fitting the client’s intended use and expectations.
All exterior details were done monochromatically in red for a uniform and distilled expression that references traditional Swedish red houses in the area in a contemporary way. Using one similar simple logic, the inside of the house, including parts of the bathroom, was clad completely in pine plywood, creating a warm and inviting contrast to the bare concrete floor and invoking a reference to the tall pine trees outside.
The entire design of the house was done on the basis of an existing foundation on the site. This naturally translated into a plan layout with beds/bathroom towards one gable and an open living room with a built-in seating niche opposite the compact functions. Windows were carefully placed to frame views of the surrounding nature and water, and the inside window frames were completely hidden in order to blur the boundaries between the inside and the outside of the house.
The house was given an asymmetric roof profile to reflect the functional needs inside by providing an extra sleeping loft in the highest part of the house. This feature, along with the varying window placements, gives the house a playful expression in tune with the unpretentious nature of the site and the project.
