PLYWOOD BOX EXTENTION

On a steep slop­ing site in Lil­län­gen in Nac­ka stands a dilap­i­dat­ed but fun­da­men­tal­ly nice and hum­ble house from the 1930s.

Our project rearranges both floors of the exist­ing house and adds a ply­wood-clad exten­sion on its backside.

The exist­ing stair is torn down and replaced by a new cen­tral­ly placed stair lib­er­at­ing one short end of the house. The new stair and a new bath­room form a new cen­tral core around which the entrance floor is arranged. The kitchen is moved out into the new exten­sion and a new sequence of rooms, from the steep slop­ing north side of the plot via the kitchen and the liv­ing room to the new south-fac­ing ter­race, is cre­at­ed. The main bed­room is placed cen­tral­ly in the house while two minor bed­rooms are kept in their orig­i­nal posi­tions towards the west façade, now con­nect­ed via a com­mon play loft.

The base­ment hous­es a big com­mon space, a bath­room, wash­ing facil­i­ties, stor­age and a bicy­cle garage.

The exist­ing win­dows and façade pan­el­ing are wornb down and needs replac­ing. The new pan­el­ing resem­bles the old. New win­dows are car­ried out in mat­te-lac­quered oak on both the orig­i­nal house and the exten­sion. In rethink­ing the plan the facades have been adjust­ed to bet­ter suit the new spa­tial orga­ni­za­tion. The top of the win­dows has been raised in order to let more light, sky and tree­tops in.

The ply­wood box is defined by three big win­dow open­ings. One stand­ing fixed win­dow fram­ing the north­ern slope, one high, open­able win­dow above the kitchen top and a wide win­dow behind the kitchen sofa open­ing out towards the new morn­ing terrace.

The box is built on a strict mod­ule and is clad in façade ply­wood. The joints are cov­ered with wood­en batons. All parts of the façade are paint­ed I the same tone of warm grey.

The plan allows for a rel­a­tive­ly large exten­sion, but the build­able area is lim­it­ed to a thin wedge of land on the east of the exist­ing house. We’ve let the wedge shape inform the struc­ture and form of the exten­sion. The plan is based on a mir­ror-sym­met­ri­cal, leaf-shaped struc­ture where exte­ri­or walls and a lon­gi­tu­di­nal cen­tral beam car­ry trans­ver­sal beams per­pen­dic­u­lar to the cen­tral beam. A con­crete base­ment car­ries two wood­en sto­ries. The base­ment hous­es a spa, the two sto­ries above house bed­rooms, a bath­room, and a com­mon room. The orig­i­nal house and the exten­sion are con­nect­ed via a nar­row glass link. Along the south façade towards the gar­den, a wood­en deck func­tion­al­ly ties the dif­fer­ent parts of the build­ing togeth­er dur­ing the warmer months.

The plan­ning reg­u­la­tions dic­tate an exten­sion for­mal­ly quite dif­fer­ent to the orig­i­nal archi­tec­ture. The exten­sion is nar­row­er and only allows for one room in depth giv­ing it a more closed façade towards the street and a more open façade towards the gar­den in the south. The load-bear­ing struc­ture of the exten­sion is mir­rored in the façade, where relief in the wood­en pan­el­ing cre­ates a clear order and directs the place­ment of openings.

In con­junc­tion with the con­struc­tion of the exten­sion, the orig­i­nal house will be ren­o­vat­ed. Both will be paint­ed in the same shade of light grey but will be giv­en dif­fer­ent win­dow colors.