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Architects: GRAD arkitekter
- Area: 90 m²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Karin Björkquist
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Manufacturers: Hajom
Text description provided by the architects. How to create an extension for a single family house without altering the existing architecture? This was the main issue of the project, clearly expressed both by the clients and the building permit authorities.
The program of the extension is three bedrooms for children, a common playroom and a bathroom. The existing house is a well-drawn architecture from the late 40s, quite usual in the suburbs of Stockholm. A blind gable in the living room was the perfect start point for the extension: the entrance to a satellite designed for children.
The new small house has a pitched roof and is covered with larch panel. Two large sliding windows in the playroom connect the different levels to the garden. Beside one of them, a sitting bench is placed towards the west sun, which reveals the materiality of the interior spaces.
The conception of the interior spaces is not reflected in the simple exterior shape of the house. The bedrooms form different volumes connected together by one interstitial space.
This interstitial space begins with a large oak door, announcing the passage between the old and the new house, between the adults and the children’s kingdom. A complex staircase of oak connects the level of the existing house with the playroom, and the playroom with the bedrooms upstairs. This architectural promenade follows childish rules: the straight line can be a little bit boring and the fastest way is not always the most playful! A spiral movement is definitely funnier.
One of the bedrooms is covered with oak panel and is floating over the playroom, giving the feeling that a kind of magic is present in this tiny space.
The materiality is simple: oak and white surfaces that can easily evolve with the growing kids, while the spaces will remind them of their playful childhood.
