Nature Note

Stockholm’s Note Design Studio has always stood apart for its multidisciplinary approach: from product design to branding and creative direction, as a collective it thrives on cross-pollination. Until now, though, Note had never tackled a purely architectural project. With the completion of this contemporary cabin in the woods in the Swedish mountain village of Ottsjö, it can chalk up a first – and it feels like a satisfying expression of the studio’s 360-degree vision.

“We’d been actively looking for projects within the fields of architecture for a long time. Then from nowhere the client posted [on Instagram] that she had bought a plot of land in Ottsjö, and a colleague of ours took a chance and suggested that we design the house for them – which paid off,” says Note’s Johannes Karlström. In this region, there is a local vernacular style with deeply practical roots – steeply pitched roofs for snow to run off, and a dominant use of local timber, inside and out – and Note has refined this in a crisp contemporary style.

Instead of being a single rectangular house, however, it has been designed as a series of staggered forms, breaking up the larger mass. “Up north we have very limited daylight, so we wanted a longer structure stretching from east to west, which meant that multiple rooms would gain from the southern sun,” says Note’s Jesper Mellgren. “But the site was sloping slightly southwest, so in order to follow the natural curves of the terrain we divided the house into three, and put them offset to each other. This rationalised the floorplan, but it also gave each module a window with views to the east where the mighty Ottfjället rises from the forest.” Two first-floor bedrooms are connected by a central footbridge between them; the bridge runs over the kitchen, “allowing for both physical and vocal access” between floors.

The house’s designers have been strict in their choice of materials, helping to achieve that coherence between inside and out, but also creating a beautiful sense of quiet that radically suits the muffled snowy landscapes beyond. Local heart pine has been used for both the exterior and interior walls: “It is of very good quality since it grows slowly,” says Karlström. “It is used untreated in the facade, and will over time change colour to a grayish tone in the facade towards north and a deep, honey like brown tone where the wood is exposed to direct sunlight to the south.” Different panel widths create subtle variation across the facade.  “For the interior, the wood is treated with a hard wax oil to make it resistant to grease, stains and other types of wear,” says Karlström.

Complementing the pine are just two other materials, Norwegian marble (sourced from just across the mountain), cladding the bathroom and used for countertops, and metal. “This minimalistic approach made us work a lot with how the materials could be used, and to bring out the architectural qualities of volume, light and structure of the material itself,” says Mellgren.

The straight lines and ‘newness’ of the pine- and marble-clad interior is contrasted with some carefully chosen vintage wooden furniture, “a way of connecting the house to the long tradition of mountain cottages in Sweden and the classic furniture these usually contain,” says Karlström. Meanwhile, classic 20th-century pieces in metal, including Verner Panton’s Wire floor lamp and a Bertoia Diamond chair, give the interiors a harder and more powerful edge, needed against the backdrop of so much wood.

“This project represents our evolution as creators, bringing our experience in interiors into a broader architectural vision,” says Mellgren. “It is a house that fills the needs of the people living there today, and it will also be a contribution to the village of Ottsjö and the site itself for generations to come.”