Rauðilækur
How do you connect a house to its site?
How do you amplify the experience of a place — the berries and moss underfoot, the mountain rising behind, or the vast panoramic view of Hvalfjörður with not a single house in sight?
Decades ago, the owners had a very small one-room cabin on this plot. Today, most of us long for larger homes, yet with increased space often comes a diminished connection to the outdoors. One of the strongest memories of that tiny old cabin, which was eventually blown away in a thunderstorm, was how its smallness pushed life outside. They spent most of their time outdoors, coming in only for shelter and sleep. There is a quiet beauty in this simple way of living, something many of us remember from childhood moments in a tent, before growing older and accumulating space and belongings.
The goal for Rauðalækur was to capture this spirit on a steep, challenging hillside: to design a home as small as possible, merging sustainable building principles with the essence of the original cabin.
In the bedroom, a large sliding door opens directly to the moss-covered slope. Towards the fjord, the house cantilevers outward with panoramic windows, stretching the interior toward the long view. The architecture creates a tension between what is near and what is far — drawing you out into the quiet solitude of nature, while offering precisely the amount of shelter needed.
The material palette is deliberately simple. The house is cast in concrete, with exterior cladding made from Icelandic larch sourced in Hallormsstaður forest. Inside, the floors and walls are exposed concrete facing the views, while the interior ceiling is lined with larch, bringing warmth and softness to the raw structure. All exterior cladding, including the terrace, is Icelandic larch, allowing the building to weather naturally into the landscape.
Hvalfjörður - Kjós
