Stories / Other Stories     

The Most Beautiful House in the World

Can existing qualities enrich new situations? Can new qualities enrich existing situations? Do our design methods affect what existing qualities we are able to cultivate? How can we design with, and not against, our surroundings?

By Einar Bye and Ola Sendstad
Published 30 Aug, 2012
 
One of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Steinkjer.

One of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Steinkjer.

Another of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Singsaas.

Another of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Meldal.

Another of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Hovin.

Another of the houses Bye and Sendstad were offered for their project. Selbustrand.

The house they finally chose: a traditional Trøndelag structure from Inderøya, which they carefully disassembled and moved to its new site at Sund Community College.

The house at Inderøya during disassembly.

A selection of old materials was combined with new parts at the new site. The selection process was crucial: It is easy to discard something when it is no longer part of a whole.

New solutions were developed on site. There were no drawings made for the old or the new house.

The house combines old and new bits.

The open process was risky. In the end, the project was more about developing a certain attitude than about a controlled aesthetic result.

Positive things appeared unexpectedly, but it was a constant challenge to avoid meaningless juxtapositions.

From the opening. A new house for the students at Sund Community College.

For their 2012 architecture thesis project, Bye and Sendstad were fascinated with the character of structures we normally think of as useless. They put an ad in the local paper and visited a 30 abandoned houses and interviewed the owners, many of whom were ashamed of the buildings they were no longer able to maintain. They were seemingly faced with two choices: restoration to the original, or a complete modernisation. Bye and Senstad argues for a third approach – restoring and developing parts, even where time has left the totality behind. Their thesis structure is not a conclusion, it was an experiment. But similar methods may allow us to make better use of and develop the qualities of an existing building, and to challenge the attitude that a building is at its best the day it is first completed. Rather, they argue, building could be an open and positive process, a gradual cultivation of our surroundings.

Facts:
"The Most Beautiful House in the World" is Bye and Sendstad's Master’s thesis project, Faculty of Architecture and Art, NTNU 2012.