On the Coast of Sweden, a Family Getaway Riffs on Traditional Fishing Cottages
Radar Arkitektur builds a modest cabin that synchs with its site and lives larger than its square footage.
Radar Arkitektur builds a modest cabin that synchs with its site and lives larger than its square footage.
Bohuslän, a province on the west coast of Sweden, is home to more than 8,000 islands, and it’s celebrated for its quintessential fishing villages and spectacular natural beauty—including the smooth rock formations that define its shoreline.
It’s here that Helena Brunskog and Thomas Antonsen decided to build a holiday cottage to accommodate their family of five, as well as relatives and friends. To bring their vision to life, Helena approached her longtime friend, architect and owner of Radar architecture, Susanna Ringnér.
Located about an hour from Gothenburg and two-and-a-half hours from Oslo, Bohuslän was the ideal location for Helena Brunskog and Thomas Antonsen’s cottage. "We immediately fell in love with the slightly hilly site, and its location along a narrow dirt road with cows grazing on the other side," says Helena. "Until then, I had never thought of building a summerhouse, but when we got the chance, we just had to take it. Especially when my old friend, Susanna, said she could design it for us."
Photo by Mikael Olsson
The couple, who have three children and a dog, had previously owned a typical Swedish cottage in the region that they bought 18 years ago when their first child was born.
"It was important to have a place to spend time in my home country with my children," says Helena. "We had some really happy years in our first cottage, but we weren’t completely satisfied with the location on a busy road, or the fact that the sun disappeared behind the forest early in the evening." So, they commissioned Ringnér to create a new holiday home—on a site just a few miles away—that would better suit their lifestyle.
The black paint on the timber cladding is similar in composition to "falu red," a permeable red paint commonly used on wooden cottages and barns in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The paint consists of water, rye flour, linseed oil, silicates, iron oxides, copper compounds, and zinc. When it is time to repaint the house, the old paint is simply brushed or scrubbed away.
Photo by Mikael Olsson
The brief for the new cottage was simple: it needed to embrace the surrounding natural beauty, sit gently on the existing landscape, comply with Sweden’s strict building regulations for holiday homes, and be able to host large gatherings of friends and family.
The cottage features a wraparound deck on three sides. A door leads from the kitchen to the deck, allowing easy access for a morning coffee.
Photo by Mikael Olsson
See the full story on Dwell.com: On the Coast of Sweden, a Family Getaway Riffs on Traditional Fishing Cottages
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