Villa Storingavika in Bergen, Norway

July 23, 2010 Category: House, Residential

Located in Bergen, Norway, Villa Storingavika was designed by Saunders Architecture. As a work of architecture, Villa Storingavika is a textbook example of a regional modernism, combining the modern gesture of wide spanning platforms of space with the traditional forms and materials of Bergen’s light-framed timber houses. The building’s proportions are also akin to Bergen’s maritime architecture and its long history of two-storey timber buildings. Translating this established building approach to a restrained, contemporary volume links the house to its context, and ties it indelibly to the site. In its composition, the building relates to the outcrops of coastline that it frames.

Metaphorically, the house could be compared to the eroded outcrops of rocks it overlooks, with its cantilevered ledges and deep reveals and apertures. It has a sense of permanence that grounds it to the landscape. Three main materials are used in the project: glass, black-stained fir and oiled Canadian cedar. All of the decorative and aesthetic qualities of the building come from the materials themselves and the dimensions of those materials.

It is a very elemental, minimal response to the place, and continues through to the simple, robust and utilitarian details. Even the heating of the house arises out of the conditions of the place. A 200m long pipe extracts the constant heat of the ocean water, then recycles this heat back into the house to heat the floors. The system uses a fraction of the electrical energy that would otherwise be required for heating.

Villa Storingavika Design by Saunders Architecture