No. 5 House

Multi-disciplinary design firm Claes­son Koivisto Rune sent me these images and descrip­tion of their No. 5 House in Nacka, Swe­den. As a min­i­mal­ist I love every­thing about this house — the shape, the lay­out, the choice in fur­ni­ture, etc., etc. Check out the rest of the images and what the archi­tects had to say about this project after the break.

The start­ing point for this house for a graphic designer (he designed the No. 5 sign) and his fam­ily was a geo­met­ric vol­ume where the inside was as impor­tant as the out­side. If you wish – an inverted vol­ume. A box with a series of open­ings, or a space with a series of closures.

A grid was estab­lished that was based on stan­dard­ised dimen­sions for build­ing mate­ri­als. The grid was then super­im­posed on the box. From this grid was cre­ated the basic room struc­ture. Each room then had one of it’s four sides com­pletely glazed. The result con­tained three bed­rooms and one larger living/dining space with kitchen. The bed­rooms are basi­cally open towards one car­di­nal point each, leav­ing one open­ing in each façade. So even though the bed­rooms are small the sur­round­ing land­scape is always a part of the space, mak­ing the sense vast rather than small. The bath­room, which has no wall open­ing, has a roof win­dow instead. There is a glazed door­way from the liv­ing area to a par­tially walled ter­race, cre­at­ing an out­door room that is open to the sky at one end and open to the view at the other.

—Claes­son Koivisto Rune Arkitek­tkon­tor AB