Celebrated Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh has designed his own holiday home in a southern Swedish glade – and it’s more or less perfect.
The tiny chalet is pure in form and modern in style
Turning his attention momentarily from airport buildings, science centres and embassies, the celebrated Swedish architect, Gert Wingårdh, has come up with this distillation of a holiday chalet.
The Millhouse, which he designed and built for himself outside the village of Västra Karup in southern Sweden, is a tiny two-storey abode set in a woodland glade overlooking a millpond.
The building has a pure geometric form, with a square plan and double-pitched roof on 45° angles. None of the plain flat surfaces of wall and roof are marred by windows: instead, two of the ground-floor external walls and one first-floor gable-end are entirely glazed.
Inside, the ground floor consists of little more than an open-plan living room and kitchen galley, both of which look out through sliding glass doors to an external dining terrace and beyond to the millpond.
Upstairs, the bedroom sits on a platform that cantilevers out over the living spaces. Views are offered through the glazed gable end and through a wide gap left between the leading edge of the platform and the front of the chalet.
As for materials, the whole house is a celebration of Scandinavian timber. The upper-floor joists, kitchen fittings, living room benches and wall linings are all executed in exposed softwood and laminated timber, and continue the pure clean lines of the overall building form.
In his compact chalet, Wingårdh can contemplate the beauty of both perennial nature and modern architecture. Pure contentment!
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