Five blackened timber structures dot the shoreline of a remote island in the Stockholm archipelago to form a holiday home by Margen Wigow Arkitektkontor (+ slideshow).
Architects Cecilia Margen Wigow and Per Wigow were commissioned to design the retreat for a client who wants to “live a simple life close to nature” during his weekends and summer holidays.
The house is fragmented into a series of smaller structures and is clad in broad boards of black-painted pine, a design that the architects based on the region’s traditional fishing huts.
The five structures provide a main house, a guest suite, sauna, boat house and garden shed all set around a protected bay.
From a distance each of the blocks appears as a separate residence, so the project was given the name Small houses far out in the archipelago of Stockholm.
“We wanted to make the buildings as discrete as possible and also use traditional materials,” Cecilia Margen Wigow told Dezeen. “The ceilings are covered with resistant sedum plants that do well in the archipelago and the exteriors are painted with black ‘paint sludge’.”
The buildings’ mono-pitched roofs follow the gradient of the sloping rocks that form the plot and floor-to-ceiling windows face towards the water.
The main house is set on the highest part of the site and divided into three tiers to accommodate the sloping landscape, with a bedroom set in the uppermost level, a lounge in the centre and a dining room at the lowest level.
The terraces that surround each of the structures and a pair of pine jetties that extend over the water have been left unpainted to contrast with the dark timber siding used for the rest of the project.
The interiors are finished with natural-coloured pine floors, ply walls and upholstered window seats, which are set in cozy nooks that double as storage spaces.
The island has no electricity or water supply, so the houses are heated by soapstone fireplaces and lit with kerosene lamps.
The limited resources and remote location meant that workers had to live on the island during the construction. An electric generator and temporary housing were installed, and when the sea froze during the winter months, the crew, its equipment and supplies were transported to and from the island by helicopter.
“Because the island is so far out of reach in the archipelago the construction team had to stay on the island in the weeks and could only go home at weekend,” said the architects. “We had to start with building small removable houses for them to stay in.”
A group of similarly rocky and remote islands off the coast of Norway is home to a trio of concrete holiday homes by Norwegian studio Lund Hagem that huddle bewteen rocks and under concrete canopies.
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