Slott Natt Och Dag

Perspective East and south facade

Anders Berensson Architects has been commissioned to design an extension to a villa north of Stockholm. The extension is quite big compared to the existing house and will almost double the existing villa from 250 to 400 Square meter. To add a modern contrasting volume to the existing house which is the common way to go in Sweden would be disproportionately in this case so we decided to test and old strategy that is mostly used in strategic video and board games these days. Instead of adding a modern looking volume we decided to upgrade the house from villa to castle. Instead of balancing two big objects to each other we made them into one bigger unit by letting the new volume mirroring the old one and then unify the two volumes by adding a tower where the two volumes meet.

Facade towards the road

Perspective from inside the tower

When driving on this particular road one cannot help noticing the amount of houses with disproportionately extensions. The reason seems to be a combination of a generous local plan, real estate speculations and a lack of architects. The few houses that sticks out by being beautiful is two old ones that were built as castle from the start and some modern ones where they teared down the old house and built a new house from scratch. We chose to follow the two good-looking examples and designed a third castle on the street.

The east and south facade that faces the street follows the existing facade and creates a 1920^th castle style. The west facade facing the garden follows the existing brick facade and is more modern with panoramic windows facing the beautiful forest on the back of the house. The tower part serves as a central staircase, entrance, kitchen and studio. Each floor is designed as a small flat given the castle several opportunities on how to be used in the future.

Perspective west facade

Floor plan ground level 

Floor plan level 1

Floor plan level 2

East facade 

South facade

West facade 

North facade

South facade

Book release! Full Scale Studio Second Year

As a co-founder and director of the KTH School of architecture, Full Scale Studio. Anders Berensson is proud to present the book "Full Scale Studio Second Year 2015-2016" containing the amazing work that has been produced during the second year of the studio. 

Trätoppen

Anders Berensson Architects was commissioned by the Stockholm Center Party to design a skyscraper to replace an old car park in the city center of Stockholm. The result became a slender wood scraper "Trätoppen" (the tree top) that stands inside the car park leaving the existing car parks facade intact.

If  we want to reduce the amount of cars in the city center of Stockholm and at the same time make space for more housing without building on green areas, then replacing car parks with housing, shops and restaurants feels obvious. If the car park is as central located as the one on Regeringsgatan 47 it also make sense to build a high building that can fit a lot of people, shops and restaurants.

The existing car park, “Parkaden”, is perhaps Sweden's most famous one designed by Hans Asplund. The most characteristic feature of the house is a pattern with numbers on the facade which shows what floor you are on. Another thing that distinguishes this car park is the early use of a system of sloped floors. Retaining the sloping floor is hard due to the buildings low ceiling height, however it is possible to maintain the facade if the new building don’t use the whole footprint of the existing car park.

Picture from an apartment 

The skyscraper is retracted six meters from the existing car parks facade in order not to interfere too much with the expression of the car park . The Skyscraper is considerably smaller in foot print than the car park which enables space for a large public terrace on the seventh floor. The retraction also makes it possible to use the existing building at the lower floors after an extensive reconstruction.

The new building will be 40 stories high and built out of cross laminated timber “CLT”. In the 33 floors that protrude above the existing car park 31 floors will be residential and 2 floors will be public terraces. The seven floors inside the existing car park is best suited for shopping and restaurants due to the depth of the house. The CLT facade of the new skyscraper is a continuation of the pattern with numbers that Hans Asplund designed. From the outside, one can count the floors by reading the facade and from the inside you will be reminded what floor you are on just like in the parking garage. This is a useful feature given that the skyscraper will be the highest in the city center of Stockholm. The facade also has some practical benefits and acts like a sun screen, which keeps the building cool and energy efficient.

Picture to the left: The building seen from Hamngatan. Picture to the right: The building seen from the intersection between Regeringsgatan and Mäster Samuelsgatan

Facts:

Height: 133 m

Width: 35 m

Depth: 18 m

Number of floors: 40

Number of floors above the existing car park: 33

Number of apartments per floor: 8 pcs. A 50 m2

Total number of apartments: 250

Area per floor in the new building: 630m2

Floor programing:

Floor 40: Audience terrace

Floor 8-39: Apartments

Friend 7: Public terrace

Floor 0-6: Shopping & Restaurants

Shadow diagram 

Paper fold model

Trätoppen Sketch

Winter Cabin Summer Palace

Anders Berensson Architects has design the renovation and refurnishing of a small winter cabin in The Royal National City Park  Norra Djurgården in central Stockholm. The commission was to ad as little as possible to transform the cottage into a functioning house to live and work in without having to plug in water or sewer. Today the cabin is completely empty of furniture and basic functions such as toilet, storage, places to rest and cooking facilities on top of that the house lacks daylight and is poorly heated. The new design features all of these necessities plus much more. The client who is a true outdoor person also asked for a grand outdoor space which he could use during summer time. Therefore the concept behind the design has been that all you can do in the winter inside the cabin you can also do outside at summer time. At summer the house grows from cabin to an outdoor palace where the client can spend most of his day in the beautiful national park.

Rendering of front veranda

The outdoor veranda surrounds the whole building and contains functions such as a kitchen, small green houses, seating areas, a grill, water collector and a hen house. The veranda also cover parts of the roof where the client can catch the morning sun and grow spices and herbs on the south side, on the north side is apartments for birds and bats.

Front perspective 

Floor plans

Sections

Axonometric sketch

Bridges Beaches & Bars

A long beach between Stadshusbron Bridge and Klarabergsviadukten bridge partly under the Klarastrandsleden bridge.

Anders Berensson Architects was commissioned by the Stockholm Center party to visualize how the areas under the bridges in Stockholm would look if they were activated with bars, beaches, pop up houses, food trucks etc. Given the similarity to some of our office previous work we are very proud to visualize these political proposals and hopefully help them a bit further towards getting realized.

Opera plus more under the Tranebergsbron bridge. 

If you like this project you might also like these proposals previously designed by the office: “Under the bridge” and “Stockholm Water Fire Light”.

85% says build it!

During the last month our project Klarastaden has gone viral and has been featured in webpages, magazines and tabloids like Techinsider, Citylab, Dezeen, Inhabitat, SVT (Swedish State Television), The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Clarion, Metro, Architectural Digest to just mention a few. One of the news that made us extra happy and surprised is a local voting at the webpage lajkat.aftonbladet.se. 85% of more than 5000 voters says build it! We are uttermost proud to be crowd pleasers!

Fold-Out Sauna

Anders Berensson Architects has designed a shed that can fold out to become a sauna when needed. The sauna is to be located in a small allotment garden area close to the city center of Stockholm. The local plan allow a complementary storage building of 3 square meter without needing to apply for a building permit. The client however wanted a sauna rather than a storage and asked us if it was possible to design a storage building that could transform into a bigger sauna when needed. The answer to this unusual request became this fold-out sauna. 

Video of Fold-Out Sauna transforming from storage to sauna

Section drawing of the buddings two modes 

Fold-Out Sauna when closed; A 3 square meter shed with racks for tools and with an outdoor bench on the back side.

Fold-Out Sauna when opened; The sauna is now 6 square meters. The racks has become three levels of seating with a view towards the canal from the top seat. The outdoor bench works as a support for the structure.

The office actually has a history of building hidden saunas. If you like this project you might also want look at our earlier project Secret Sauna.