Extension to a private house, Stockholm

Wedge Ex­ten­sion is a pro­po­sal for an ex­ten­sion to a pri­vate house from the 1920s in Mä­lar­höj­den, Stock­holm. The house stands on a 650 sqm ir­re­gu­lar plot at the end of Mä­lar­höjds­vä­gen, where the small-scale single-fa­mily housing structure of Mä­lar­höj­den me­ets the lar­ger scale of Bredäng.

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.