Writers House Vega

Jordi Costa — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:23:27 +0000

Architects: Kolman Boye Photography: Åke E:son Lindman Construction Period: 2019 Location: Vega, Norway

The house stands on the island of Vega in the Norwegian archipelago not far from the polar circle. The site is distinctive for its grand and harsh northern landscape with wide panoramas of the Norwegian Sea and the jagged mountains rising from it.

Seemingly growing from the landscape, the house sits on a rock beneath a granite shoulder negotiating the uneven terrain. As not to disturb the dominant view towards the sea, access to the house is given through a narrow natural ravine densely grown with gnarled birch shrubs and laid out with sea-sand from the nearby shore. The surrounding landscape remains untouched and wild.

The large windows of the house face three directions, each with its strong unique characteristic. They are simple and robust in detailing and the optically white glass conveys undisturbed frames of the ocean, the mountain range and the bedrock.

Organised on two levels adapting to the terrain, the plan is compact, providing generous social spaces within a limited floor area. The upper level is comprised of smaller scale bedrooms and family rooms, whereas the lower level is a large gallery-like space structured around a stone hearth.

Completed in linseed oil painted pine with untreated birch skirting, frames and reveals – the interior is kept subtle with a character of being hand-built – promoting tactile qualities and the attractive patina developed over time.

Text provided by the architect.

La entrada Writers House Vega se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Saltviga House

Jordi Costa — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 10:50:52 +0000

Architects: Kolman Boye Photography: Johan Dehlin Construction Period: 2022 Location: Saltviga, Norway

In our recent projects and in our teaching and research, we have come across Dinesen materials as both the traditional floors and as a scrap, a leftover, an off-cut from the production of made-to-measure floors. Making and thinking with these leftovers from the production gave rise to a notion of making a building of them as a sympathetic way of using and ennobling scrap materials that would otherwise have been used as firewood. Besides being beautiful the off-cuts are low in embodied carbon and could offer an alternative to more commonly used and more carbon intensive materials.

The idea of using the leftovers for a house was developed in a combined strategy of sorting representative pallets of material from the production to classify size, quantity and quality as well as through the building of several 1:1 mock-ups, researching stacking and layering combinations together with technical properties and experiential effects. Differing from traditional split wooden shingles used in Norway, the research into these sawn timber planks resulted in a straight-forward yet complex approach that required traditional material knowledge as well as a considerable process development to make it work in a timely and economical fashion.

The production and assembly of the timber elements for the building drew on the collective knowledge of the involved carpenters, joiners, and suppliers. In the production, each of the 12.000+ individual oak off-cuts from Dinesen’s floor production were pre-cut to size with minimal waste, pre-drilled, and pre-treated with tar at our carpentry before being transported to the site. In the assembly of the facade on site, each individual oak element required precise handling and 20 000+ stainless steel screws for fastening, reinforcing the robust, assembled and layered character of the cladding.

The resulting building negotiates a landscape of rocks, lichen, ferns, conifers and deciduous trees on a bluff, facing the sea of Skagerrak on the south-eastern coast of Norway. Avoiding reshaping the terrain, the building is meticulously adapted to the north-east sloping ground, forming three volumes that are situated on five different levels. Outside, the three volumes create two distinct spaces separated by an openable wind-barrier: a courtyard towards the forest that is protected from the wind and an open deck towards the sea which holds views through an existing pruned “window-band” in the conifers.

Inside, each space has a distinct volume and ceiling height, with the central hallway giving clear views through the whole house and the windows, stretching the full length of the facade towards the sea, bringing unity and coherence to the different levels. Where the exterior oak cladding will turn silvery-grey over time and blend in with the slate and granite landscape, the interior Douglas cladding is kept in a slightly warmer, whitish hue, balanced by the neutral screed floors.

Text provided by the architect.

La entrada Saltviga House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Kolman Boye archivos - Global Spaces

Writers House Vega

Saltviga House