Flash in the forest: carved with great precision into the wooded, half-tame landscape of an Oslo suburb, this house has geometric austerity and human warmth

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002

Oslo is a vast city, sprawling up the sides of its bowl from the old Danish centre into the hills and forests of a gentle, though still sometimes almost sublime landscape. The Red House is in one of the delicious wooded western suburbs, in this case studded with postwar detached houses, carefully sited among the trees to maximize contact with a nature that is apparently wild but in fact tamed by electricity, mains drainage and modern roads. Set on the steep east side of a heavily wooded valley, the rectangular plan is at right angles to the slope, with the entrance on the top level at the east end. Orientation is designed to catch the best views and to minimize the impact on the view from the house uphill -- in the large garden of which the new building has been made.

The entrance level is for the parents and for family living, with the master bedroom, kitchen and main communal space. A covered balcony terminates the sequence, offering a gazebo from which you glimpse the river below through the trees. But the most dramatic views are to the south, across the stream over what appears as virgin forest.

Downstairs, the lower floor is for children, with three bedrooms and a separate sitting room. That commands a view of forest floor to the north west, and the bedrooms look north at this level, along the valley. When the windows are open, they draw in scents of the forest: pine, berberry, fern, peaty earth.

Construction is conventional, with a laminated timber frame over an in-situ basement floor partly cut into the hillside. The colour of the lapped cladding boards was chosen, say the architects, 'to reflect the temperament of the client'. H.M.

Architect

Jarmund/Vigsnaes

Photographs

Nils Petter Dale