Facade Juniper House in Katthammarsvik

Sliding Glass Juniper House in Katthammarsvik

Sliding Glass with Aluminium from Velfac Juniper House

The House are Green Juniper House in Katthammarsvik

The Roof Flat Clad with Tar Paper Juniper House

White Interior Walls Juniper House

This house is an experiment a house is more than a weekend cottage. There is a grove of high junipers and a couple of white plastered houses visible. The house is barely visible, like a mirror of its own surroundings. The slow growing junipers that enclose the house are green throughout the whole year. A photo of the existing junipers was used as the base for the tailor-made cloth that is 35 metres wide and 3 meters high and wrapped onto tree sides of the house The netvinyl cloth is put on a galvanized steel construction at a distance of 40 centimetres from the façade. The walls are isolated with 120 mm mineral wool. The ground is a concrete plate. The roof is flat clad with tar paper. On the north and south side of the house the cloth is extended a few extra meters for privacy and to hide the outdoor shower from the neighbours. The wooden facade is treated with a combination of turpentine, tar and linseed oil.

The sliding glass parts are clad with aluminium from Velfac and full aluminium from Scücho. The large glass partitions is insulated in the same plane as the façade elements fixed to the angled profiles made of aluminium. The centrally placed kitchen works as a living room. The wide sliding doors towards the terrace and the enclosed yard make it possible to have good contact with the nature during all types of weather. The sliding glass partitions also works as a temperature regulator while minimising draught problems. A wall of glass from ceiling to floor stands towards the minimal yard. Both light and the path “flow” through the house and a terrace of white local limestone separates the kitchen from the master bedroom. Thanks to the glass partitions and the white interior walls the small court yard is experienced as a part of the inside. From the master bedroom there is a lot of sky visible, due to the significantly sized glass partitions, and through the low placed window you can se wild rabbits in the morning. There is only a curtain separating the bedroom from the rest of the house.

Juniper house is thought to be experienced as the glade it stands in. The project started with measuring all junipers on the site. The façade is a playful comment to the Gotland authority’s ambition to not let modern architecture be visual in the landscape. It is also an experiment and investigation in what you see and do not see of a house and how this affects you and how you experience colour, texture, surface, material, transparency, inside contra outside light on and through the façades.

Ulla Alberts, Hans Murman architects
Photo: Hans Murman

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Architecture Design, Modern Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.