Villa Fuglenesseter
Rakkestad, Norway
Houses
2023
At the edge of a forest on the border between Norway and Sweden, the house sits alongside a nearly 300-year-old barn. Rather than meet its neighbour as a single contemporary volume, the plan is broken in two, drawing on the tun, the courtyard form of the Norwegian farmyard. The house reads as part of its context at first glance, and as something entirely new at the second.
A glulam skeleton organises the plan, carries the roof, and in places serves directly as furniture. The system permits the millimetre specificity of the drawing and a rapid assembly on site, holding a traditional framing idea inside a contemporary building process. Outside, locally sourced pine treated with iron vitriol greys the building into the forest over time. Inside, plywood panels are cut at lengths that minimise waste, the variation across the walls becoming the ornamentation of the rooms.
