Private study - library built of warm wood in a house near Oslo, Norway - Norway: Special Issue

Architectural Review, The, August, 1996 by Penny McGuire

A new library built of warm wood for a '50s house near Oslo is a masterpiece of joinery. It forms a self-contained room for private silent study and contemplation.

In designing a library for an existing house, Carl-Viggo Holmebakk has called upon the Norwegian's traditional affiliation for wood, exploiting the intrinsic delight and warmth of the material to create a room for private study.

The house was built in 1953, in a residential suburb of Oslo and the new library is in the north-east corner of the house, with a window facing on to high spruce trees. It was conceived as something complete in itself, as a piece of furniture placed inside the existing structure. The intention was to establish a place where you could find silence and be alone with books, and which could at the same time be part of the active living centre of the house.

The space is defined by a grid 1180 x 1180 mm, which determined the span of the bookshelves and the size of the window, and suggested the position of the ceiling lamp. Niches at the corners contain the various services; while the window - an abstract shape cut out of the pattern made by the wooden shelves - is a place where you can stand by the light and rest the opened book on the deep window ledge.

Appropriately enough given the circumstances, the '50s are evoked by the use of unembellished wood and perspex light-fitting. This is a wooden room with visible surfaces left uncoated and only doorknobs and various fixings in stainless steel. The floor is of sanded oak, walls and ceiling are made of panels of pine plywood fixed to a wooden frame, and the door, window, bookshelves and library table are of massive pinewood dovetailed and held by wooden plugs.

Psychological device has played a part in Holmebakk's design. Entrance to the room is provided by a double door which blocks off noise; at the same time, the double leaf is intended to emphasise closure, and thereby the private, arcane nature of the room. The outer door facing the living room has been designed to be discreet; the inner one resembles a cabinet door. To English literary sensibilities the entrance evokes the inverse of the unassuming door that in the books of Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, and Frances Burnett lead into the secret place, from the outside world to introspection.