Anders Berensson Architects has designed
and partly built an extension to a house in the Stockholm archipelago. To keep
a low budget and still being able to elaborate with architecture the office
divided the house into two categories. “The house box” that is designed like a
simple box to be built on site with local materials and building techniques and
the “Prefabricated architectural elements” that are designed and prefabricated
by the architects and later inserted into the house during the building
process.
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| Look Out Lodge interior |
The house is designed with a focus on
simplicity and function just big enough to host a sleeping area and a small
space for working. The office then focused on designing two custom-made windows
that could be built and prefabricated by the architects for those two spaces
and purposes. One window to look towards the outside fields while working and
one window to look towards the sky when resting or falling asleep. Another goal
with the design was to redefine the idea of a window as a flat readymade glass
piece into an architectural element that creates its own space with a clear
focus towards the outside. This goal led to the design of a sky tower one can
crawl into when being in bed totally dedicated to the sky and one corner window
with a desk inserted to it that creates a work space on the inside and table
for flowers on the outside with a clear focus and direction to the outside
field. The office also designed and built the lamps and some other small
architectural details that could be added on during the building process.
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| Diagram of prefabricated architectural elements |
The Sky Tower
Looking towards a starry sky when falling asleep is a countryside
luxury. We wanted to enhance that feeling by making a round tower dedicated to
that view where you can lay down in bed and only see and focus on the sky
above. At day time the tower takes in a lot of light and is a good place to sit
and read. At night time it is the perfect place to study the stars and space. The towers inside is cladded with spruce boards with a sky light on top that appears invisible when looking out.
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| Hanging in the sky tower |
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| Looking out the sky tower |
The outside of the tower is cladded with overlapping boards. There
is a local tradition of making jig saw patterns in this type of façade so we
decided to design a pattern of big animals, amphibians, birds, flowers and
fishes that are living in the archipelago and the Baltic Sea.
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| The outside of the tower cladded with the fauna pattern on the overlapping boards |
The Desk window
The Stockholm archipelago is known for its fantastic flora of wild
flowers, outside the house lies a meadow with many of the species represented.
We designed this window to focus on this local treasury. The spruce board celling
continues seamlessly above the window and protrude long enough to cover the sky
and direct sun light framing a view towards the meadow. A desk is inserted
through the corner window. On the outside the desk I made out of terracotta red
concrete with holes for flowers to grow. The concrete was casted against the cutaway
part of the wood board sitting on the inside so one can see the subtle pattern
of the wood continue into the red concrete board outside. The inside of the
desk is made of birch plywood with holes cut out for different purposes. The
biggest hole is for sitting in the corner looking out. A bench going under the
desk in the corner creates divan type of chair where the whole becomes the
armrest. The mid-size holes are for ventilation, cables, lamps and pencils, the
tiny holes are pencil sharpeners.
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| The desk window from inside |
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| The desk window from outside |
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The
desk window and the bench beneath |
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| mid-size holes for ventilation, cables, lamps and pencils |
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| Tiny pencil sharpeners holes |
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| Reading lamp |
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| Look Out Lodge front facade |
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| Local fauna pattern |
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| Look Out Lodge at night |
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Desk
window from outside at night
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Desk
window from outside at night
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| Section |
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| Section |
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| Plan |
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| Plan |
Adding architecture
The window was inserted after the primary
structure and the cladding was done by first placing the glass and then the
boards holding it in place. The desk on the inside and outside was then added
as the last piece of the window. The concrete casting and the wood desk was
built by the office in Stockholm and transported to the site. Unfortunately
those photographs were lost.
The tower was prefabricated on site and added when the primary
structure was up.
The construction of the tower was made by jig sawed horizontally
placed plywood sheets interlocking with vertical studs. The last layer of
boards with the pattern of the local fauna was jig sawed and mounted at the end
of the building process.
The lampshades
of thin birch plywood that was cut, boiled and bent into its shape and then
mounted on different stands depending on function. The lamps was added as the
last piece to the building.
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| Tower construction and tower mounted on site |
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| Tower mounted from the inside |
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| Cutting the lamp shades |
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| Boiling, bending and drying the shade to a round form |
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Assembling
the shades
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Finished
lamp
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