Residential · 2023
House on the Fjord
A private home framing one uninterrupted view, detailed in oak, stone and blackened steel. Every opening is sized against the horizon rather than the room behind it, and the joinery was drawn full-size with the maker before a single piece was cut.
The brief
A house for two people and one view.
The clients had owned the site for twenty years before deciding to build. They asked for a house that would frame the fjord without competing with it, that could be closed up for winter and that would age well without maintenance.
The approach
We placed a long, low volume along the contour and opened the whole southern wall to the water. Everything else — bedrooms, kitchen, storage — sits behind a stone spine wall that carries the roof and holds the heat.
Oak for the rooms you touch, local stone for the walls that hold the house to the slope, blackened steel where the two meet. Three materials, chosen for how they weather rather than how they look on day one.
Project facts
Location
Sognefjord, NO
Year
2023
Scale
310 m²
Role
Architecture & joinery
Client
Private
Status
Completed
Partner in charge
Erik Marklund
Photography
Atelier Nord
Plan
One long room facing the water, everything else behind.
The plan is a single bar. The living room runs the full length of the glazed wall, the stone spine divides it from the private rooms, and a covered terrace at the western end catches the last of the evening sun.
01
Living room, glazed to the fjord
02
Stone spine wall
03
Covered terrace
Ground floor plan
1 : 200
Horizon
Every opening is sized against the horizon, not the room behind it.
The head of the glazing sits exactly at the height of the far shore, so from a seated position the view is water and sky with no frame in the way. In the bedrooms the windows are narrow and low, and the view is a single line.
Down to the last detail
Three junctions, drawn full size.
Design intent is protected in the details, and details are decided on site. These are the three we spent the most time on.
01
Glazing to stone
The frameless glass runs into a slot cut in the stone wall, so the view reads as a break in the masonry rather than a window.
02
Oak stair
Solid oak treads cantilever from the spine wall without a stringer; the shadow gap does the work of a handrail.
03
Roof edge
A single folded plate of blackened steel forms gutter, fascia and drip in one line, forty millimetres thick.
Gross floor area
Months from brief to opening
Materials, in the same order everywhere
View, uninterrupted from end to end
“
We wake up inside the landscape now. The house is there, but it never asks for attention.
A. & M. Haugen
Owners · Client, House on the Fjord
