Cabin Inside-Out, Hvaler

The design of a holiday cabin is pared down to the bare necessities of living. Life moves in a circle from one simple task to another, and the programme is a basic one: cooking, eating, sleeping, washing, being together. The design is correspondingly basic – the architectonic result follows this limited programme and is tailored to the direction, climate and topography of the landscape.

The site lies in the skerries on the outermost point of Papperøy Island in the municipality of Hvaler, one of Norway’s most popular summer holiday locations. It consists of a plateau in an archipelago landscape that varies from deep rocky clefts to flat areas with low vegetation. The plateau is situated 25 metres above sea level, exposed to the wind and with a panoramic view of the sea and the horizon.

The cabin is a slim building with small rooms – the inside is always close to the outside. It is organised around a courtyard, making the outside inside. This produces a sequence of spaces, one behind the other: from the inside we look onto the outside, which looks into a further inside space, which looks onto yet another outside space.

The building stands on piles directly on the rock and consists of a wooden structure with cross-bracing steel elements. It is clad with horizontal oak boards of heartwood fixed with acid-proof screws, and all the exterior terraces are made of larch wood. The interior surfaces are clad with untreated birch: plywood for the ceilings and walls and solid wood for the floors. Energy saving glass has been used. Areas of glazing that are not meant to be opened are merely mounted with sealant.