Hölick Sea Resort has operated for many years as a traditional tenting campground 300 km north of Stockholm. It sits at the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by sandy beaches and natural forest. The resort already had a few small cabins but the owners wanted to add some more modern cabins to appeal to a wider clientèle. They approached architect Mats Edlund, who collaborated with architects Henrietta Palmer and Matts Ingman to produce two designs, the larger of which we will look at today.
Today we visit a small timber framed house in the Czech Republic. It is located on the outskirts of the historic town of Kromeriz, on a long and narrow lot with mature trees. ARCHTEAM worked within the constraints of the lot to produce a design that is closed on the sides but open to the backyard. The architects describe it as being like “a piece of furniture in the middle of the garden”.
© Alejandro del Castillo
This small modern house is located near Villarrica, Chile and has a view over a valley to the Villarrica Volcano. For a relatively small house, it has a fairly complex and dynamic shape. The house consists of two opposing shed-roofed volumes separated by a small courtyard. Architect Rodrigo del Castillo of Chilean studio DOM designed the two volumes to correspond to the client’s request for a house with a separate flexible-use space.
This small house rises above the trees on a forested hillside. To take full advantage of the available views, architect Keiichi Hayashi stacked the rooms vertically, creating a simple tall box of a house. Working with the slope, he opted for a split-level plan that divides the 96 m2 (1,033 ft2) of space over a total of six levels, each dedicated to a single function. Starting at the bottom, they are the entry foyer, children’s bedroom, bathroom, parent’s bedroom, living room, and kitchen/dining room at the top of the house. The six levels are connected by a switchback staircase in the middle of the small floor plan.
photo by Stewart Applegath
The Cape Breton landscape is dotted with small gable roofed houses, often shingled and with minimal roof overhangs. The Sea and Sky Cottage was designed by architect Craig Applegath and artist Stewart Applegath to resemble those vernacular houses. However instead of the small, closed-off rooms that would be found in older houses, this updated version has an open floor plan and a ceiling that vaults up to the roof ridge.
The cottage sits on an exposed grassy bluff with sweeping views of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Bright red shutters protect the windows from the storms that regularly sweep in from the Gulf, bringing winds of up to 130 km per hour.
Architect Daniel Martí i Pérez of DMP Arquitectura collaborated with designers Jurgen Van Weereld and Karin Giesberts to produce this small prefab house in the province of Alicante, Spain. Not only did they design it but they built it themselves, using it as a prototype to test and refine their ideas about how to build economical yet stylish prefabricated housing.
Today’s featured small house is a laneway house in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver allows homeowners with alley access to replace their garages with a second small house. The Arbutus is a recently completed project by Smallworks Studios & Laneway Housing. Smallworks specializes in the design and construction of laneway houses and backyard cottages in the Vancouver area. The Arbutus has two bedrooms and two full bathrooms in only 750 ft2 (69.7 ft2) of living space. That sounds like it would be a bit cramped but the home maintains a general feeling of spaciousness.
The Skyward House is a small cottage designed for a single woman by architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto of acaa. The cottage looks unassuming from the road below but it has a remarkable interior designed to feel much larger than its 67.1 m2 (722 ft2). The architect divided the small floor plan into two distinct zones, outwardly-focused spaces that connect to the surroundings and a dynamic inward-focused space.
