The brief came from the very limited budget: a house as simple as possible. As simple as the barn that we wanted to convert into a summer apartment, but which never appeared on the market: an open space with a large number of possible beds, cooking in the middle, washing facilities outside the house. Planning regulations regulated the placement of the house on the inner part of the property, which was still densely overgrown and hardly accessible at the time of planning. Therefore, the house has been designed with general qualities that do not create a front or back and treat all sides of the property equally. Four large openings of 2.4x2m are arranged according to the rotational symmetry, one in each façade. Facing north is a fixed window, the other three are glazed doors. There is no hierarchy between the doors - each can be used as an entrance. Two skylights add a skylight to the interior.
Due to a historical lack of wood, timber construction, which is preferred elsewhere in Sweden, is not so dominant on the island of Gotland. Instead, the local building tradition has led to simple plastered stone houses with few details.
For this reason, the house was given a traditional building volume with plastered walls and a 45-degree gable roof without gutters. The walls are made of lightweight concrete bricks and the roof is clad with corrugated aluzinc steel sheets, which are preferably used in agricultural buildings in the region. The dimensions of the building volume and openings are chosen according to the size of the bricks in order to minimise material loss.
There is a preserved tradition of small-scale window manufacturing on Gotland, which made it possible to try out the unconventional solution of windows outside the walls, which allows them to open 180 degrees. Due to the flush window frame to the niche walls and the floor, the opening appears from the inside as a clean, undetailed hole in the wall. Opening upwards, the doors are held in place along the façade by a simple spring steel fitting.
Four 40cmx40cm ventilation openings with wire mesh and internal plywood shutters allow diagonal air circulation through the house. In winter, they are simply supplemented with an insulating board.
The roof has a simple construction with rafters supported by a longitudinal glulam ridge beam. Due to the span, the beam is supported by a steel column that remained unfinished and rusted. The inside of the roof is clad with the same steel sheets as on the outside. All this, together with the plastered interior walls, gives the interior an "outside but inside" quality. Parts of the inner roof, around the skylights, are clad with plywood. The cladding covers the window frames and the skylights appear as holes to the sky.
The interior is dominated by two volumes of plywood, which offer space for playing and sleeping in and beyond. Around and between these volumes takes place, entry, cooking, eating and living. All control functions are organized on a 90 cm wide strip through the house. All the technical equipment, as well as all the water and drainage, are located along this belt, which reduced the complexity of the installation work. Spatial features such as stairs, storage rooms, cabinets, bookshelves, etc. are also located along the serving strip. In the middle is the kitchen, which consists of a 3.1m x 0.9m concrete bench with an integrated fireplace. It is cast on site and the cabinets are remaining parts of the casting. In this case, the formwork plywood was used for its actual purpose.
The furniture is largely assembled from our reused building material.
Source: Dinell Johansson Architects
Photos: Elisabeth Toll
