Späckhuggaren

01/15

Späckhuggaren is a solitary object in the landscape. An unconventional geometry in a traditional colour, its design is sprung from the location and its history, a peculiar translation of the genius loci.

The house is built for a single father of two with great interests in music, sailing and nature. The plot is located half an hour north of Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast at the edge of a vast farmland.

Historically, a warehouse housing a rural shop stood on the site. The warehouse burnt down four generations ago and was never rebuilt, but the story together with similar vernacular buildings in the vicinity influenced the new house. The resulting design is a simple, warehouse inspired volume with a distinct motif of frames in the facade and large barn doors covering the large windows facing west, all painted in traditional Swedish Falu-Red colour.

The client wanted an open and social two-story house. He asked for a house that could blend in and become a part of the site and its surroundings but still had a spatial richness of its own.

The main conceptual idea of the design is to create an ‘open section’; like an open plan in three dimensions. The varying height of rooms and levels, the openness between floors and the elaborate path of the stairs allows spaces of the house to intertwine.

Späckhuggaren won the Rödfärg Prize in 2018 and the Häuser Award 2019. The house was nominated to the Dezeen Awards and the Swedish Architects Villa Prize in 2019.

Typology	Private Housing
Size	134 sqm
Year	2019
Status	Completed

Client	Private
Team	Andreas Lyckefors, Per Bornstein, Johan Olsson, Caroline Jokiniemi, Viktor Stansvik, Monica Warwick, Ainhoa Etxeberria
Location	Kärna, Sweden
Photography	Mikael Olsson