A dogtrot cabin in Finland | K2S Architects
Villa Kallioniemi is a family vacation cabin on Lepäinen, an island in southern Finland. K2S Architects gave the small cabin a dogtrot design. A dogtrot house has two enclosed volumes joined under a common roof with a breezway in between. Before air conditioning, dogtrot houses were popular in the southern U.S. states, appreciated for the cooling breezes that could flow through the center of the house.
Although these photos show the cabin in winter, it is mainly intended as a summer vacation retreat. The cabin is heated, with radiators in the bedrooms and a woodstove in the living area, so it can also be used during cold weather. However the bathroom is in a separate utility building and the two children’s bedrooms can only be reached by an outside hallway. The parents’ bedroom, at the opposite end, is directly connected to the living area.
The children’s bedrooms are small but the dividing wall can open up to create a larger single bedroom. The living space is also small but French doors open it to the breezeway, which functions as the real living room in summer anyway. The living space is enclosed by glass on three sides, with a kitchenette along the fourth wall. There is another cooking area with barbecue and small sink in the breezeway.
Villa Kallioniemi has a simple, clean-lined form that the architects say was inspired by Finnish building tradition. The exterior is clad in vertical pine boards and the rafter tails were left exposed. The interior also has a pine finish, but the boards were whitewashed on the inside.
A small dogtrot house like this would be relatively easy for an inexperienced owner-builder to construct. The dogtrot design keeps spans to a minimum, eliminating the need for long and heavy beams, and also lends itself to being built in manageable phases.
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- cabin floor plan
Photographs by Marko Huttunen, courtesy of K2S Architects. Via ArchDaily.
Text copyright 2015 SmallHouseBliss. All Rights Reserved.
Nice spacial arrangement for a weekend hangout. Would be nice to have some dimensions so one could have a sense of what the size of the physical layout is. For those who are interested, the main interior spacing appears to be about 3-1/2m to 4m/ wide or about 12′ ft.
Well, what about energy rating?
If you need to keep your buildings within a square footage, both living areas can be built as separate buildings. The breezeway could be a deck with the cover built separate from the two buildings…taller, and with enough overhang over each roof to provide shelter from rain. Three different structures, with almost the same functiinal capabilities, but still within zoning restrictions. I envision the buildings with shed roofs, angled away from deck cover…deck cover a gabled roof, slanting down over the high end of each shed roof.
Um……where is the bathroom?
Nevermind, read through it again. A dogtrot and an outhouse. Tres Americain.
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