Dezeen Magazine

Tham & Videgård's Husarö House is a scenic retreat on the Stockholm archipelago

Behind the black steel exterior of this home on the Stockholm archipelago, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter has created a living space with vaulted ceilings, and bedrooms with one big skylight overhead (+ slideshow).

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Martin Videgård, one of the two directors of Tham & Videgård, designed Husarö House as a vacation home for his own family, replacing several smaller buildings on an island site that they had owned for many years.

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"As the family grew with a new generation, the need for a larger house with more space followed," said Videgård.

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Unlike the raw concrete summer house completed by the firm last year, this two-storey home makes use of lightweight materials, including steel cladding panels, birch plywood and the engineered wooden material known as oriented strand board.

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"The light conditions, the sea view and the flat and smooth bedrock were some of the qualities that constituted the starting point for the house," explained Videgård.

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"A relatively low budget also influenced the design, resulting in the idea to use tectonic rationality to support a specific spatial structure," he added.

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The 180-square-metre building has a traditional gabled profile that creates steeply angled ceilings on the upper level, where two bedrooms sit either side of a staircase that spans the width of the building.

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The entire ground floor is taken up by living areas. These are arranged around a boxy volume that houses the staircase entrance, a bathroom and a small kitchen area.

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"Within the square plan, a freestanding box holding kitchen, bathroom and the stair, organises the ground floor into a sequence of interconnected spaces," said the architect, whose firm's past projects also include a treehouse inside a mirrored cube.

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Glue-laminated pine beams allowed Videgård to design a large space with adding any supporting columns.

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Vaulted plywood ceilings were designed to "add direction to the interior", while a series of floor-to-ceiling windows open the room out to the surrounding forest landscape.

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Wooden floors feature on both storeys, although the master bedroom and children's room upstairs both also have oriented-strand-board walls and ceilings.

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The skylight overhead runs along the ridge of the roof, which Videgård claims "underscores the verticality of space and subtly enhances the experience of seclusion".

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Furnishing includes just the basics. Three bunks built into the walls offer sleeping spaces for the children. The dining area consists of a large round table and the lounge is framed by two large green sofas.

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Photography is by Åke E:son Lindman


Project credits:

Architect: Tham & Videgård Arkitekter
Team: Martin Videgård (responsible architect), Bolle Tham, Maria Videgård
Structural Engineer: Christian Hoffman, Konkret Rådgivande Ingenjörer
Building construction: Bosse and Emil Stjernberg
Metal work: Lasse Fors
Electrician: Håkan Österman
Plumber: Lennart Källström
Ground work: Nilas Österman and Sven Ivar Öman

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Site plan – click for larger images
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Ground floor plan – click for larger image
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First floor plan – click for larger image
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Section – click for larger image
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Section – click for larger image
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Section – click for larger image