House on a HillHouse on a HillHouse on a Hill
Only a twenty-minute drive from the city centre, this house is built on a site that exemplifies the accessibility of untouched nature just outside central Stockholm. The property encompasses a large area reaching from the waterline, where a boathouse sits, up through a steep, forested slope to an open plateau at the top of the hill, where the main house is located.
The access road rises along a steep cliff from the landward side, meaning the house is approached from below. The extraordinary position of the residence, with its expansive views over the archipelago, can only be fully appreciated once one has arrived at the main level.
The clients, an active family who divide their time between the city and nature, sought a house suitable for both quiet seclusion and entertaining friends, with a direct relationship to the landscape. We envisioned the house as a structure reduced to its essence, where indoor and outdoor spaces merge to keep the focus on the scenery outside. The building is a vertical figure, freestanding like a lighthouse or a large-scale sundial, entirely cast in concrete and firmly anchored to the exposed bedrock.
The programme is organised in a three-level section: entrance and services on the souterrain level, social spaces on the mid-level and main terrace, and private family rooms at the top.
The façade structure makes no distinction between these levels. Through a 45° rotation between each floor, it creates a labyrinthine effect where the surrounding landscape serves as a point of reference for movement within the house. Around the perimeter, the folded layout results in a series of wind-shielded terraces that follow the path of the sun. From a distance, the origami-like, pleated, and rotated volume offers alternative readings of mass and void, lending the building a quality that is simultaneously solid and transparent.
