Location: Skane, Sweden Year of construction: 2000 Architect: Wingardh Arkitektkontor Photography: Ake E:Son Lindman
The Kvarnhuset Villa project consisted of converting a mill into a weekend home. The property, originally part of a farm, is in a small town outside Malmd. The various buildings of this rural grouping are located on both banks of a small stream. The house, which is the work of a team headed by Gert Wingardh, is the building nearest the stream and sits on a platform that juts out over the water.
The standard living quarters (living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom) were supplemented with a sauna. Therapeutic rituals like the sauna spawned additional spaces, including a room where users relax before entering the sauna and a swimming pool next to the house for taking cold baths at the end of each session.
The living room, kitchen, bathroom, and sauna are on the first floor. Since it is surrounded by a terrace and closed off by sliding glass doors, the relationship with the exterior is intense, and the house’s dominant position is enhanced.
The bedroom is in the loft, which is accessed by a stairway at one end of the house. Because of its unusual location, under the sloping roof.
it has two triangular walls, one wood and the other glass.
The main construction material is wood, whether boards that form a surface, slats for the sauna steps, or solid pieces that constitute the framework supporting the loft. The furniture, designed by the architects themselves, is also wood. The walls and flooring are concrete and stone, and the exterior walls combine glass with wood trim. The roof is covered by a series of small pieces of slate that evoke the building’s agricultural past.
Despite the project’s small size, care in the selection of materials and mastery of the construction details have produced a true architectural jewel.
The bedroom is in the loft, a small space under the sloping roof. The northwestern facade has no windows and is finished with the same wood as the floor and ceiling. The southeastern facade is translucent glass with metal trim.
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Seccion through the sauna |