Architecture studio Snøhetta and engineer Tor Helge Dokka have created House Dokka, a mass-timber home that perches on a hillside in Kongsberg, Norway.

House Dokka comprises a stack of two timber-clad volumes, supported by large wooden stilts drilled into the rocky, tree-lined landscape.

According to Snøhetta and Dokka, who was also the client for the project, it is intended to resemble a "floating treehouse".

This look is achieved by the home's upper volume, which projects out over the hill and is supported by stilts.

It is distinguished by black-timber cladding and a pitched roof lined with photovoltaic (PV) panels and sits level with the top of the hill with a bridged entrance.

A smaller, trapezoidal volume clad with brown-stained timber extends outward beneath the upper volume, providing a terrace to the upper floor.

House Dokka's structure is made predominantly from locally sourced cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam).

This forms part of Snøhetta's wider ambition to ensure the 190-square-metre is low-carbon, with other strategies including the use of PV panels for energy.

"The roof's angle and direction are specially chosen to optimise solar energy harvesting," project leader and senior architect Anne Cecilie Haug told Dezeen.

"For a home, the peak hours for energy use are in the morning and around dinner time, so here, the PV panels are oriented east to west to enable direct energy use without having to store the energy," Haug explained.

According to Haug, calculations show that an energy surplus generated by the PV panels throughout the year will exceed the amount required to power the house. As a result, the panels are expected to generate enough energy in the next 10 years to offset the embodied energy associated with the materials used to build the house.

Inside, House Dokka's mass-timber structure is left exposed, teamed with an abundance of plants and expansive openings drawing in daylight.

Black window frames, furniture and light fixtures along with green-toned walls contrast the wooden finishes.

Spread across two levels, the upper volume comprises an open-plan kitchen, dining room and living area, as well as a bathroom and main bedroom. Meanwhile, an office, a second bathroom and three more bedrooms are located in the lower volume.

Wooden stairs in the entrance corridor lead up to a 12-metre-square loft with views of the surrounding woodland.

The absence of nails used in House Dokka's timber construction process enables the structure to be easily disassembled and recycled at the end of its lifecycle.

Established in 1989, Snøhetta is an architecture and design studio founded by architects Craig Dykers and Kjetil Trædal Thorsen.

Its other recently completed projects include a hexagonal paver system for urban landscapes as well as an elliptical planetarium informed by the "movement of the stars".

The photography is by Robin Hayes.

Project credits: 

Architect: Snøhetta
Project lead: Anne Cecilie Haug
Engineer: Tor Helge Dokka
Collaborators: Kongsberg prosjektservice, Splitkon