Gastropod House, Espoo, Finland
Posted at 11:07 PM
Named House of the Year 2006, this private, eco-friendly house was birthed from an idea of a spiraling, twining space. I came across this unheralded beauty in a book titled Eco Houses published by Singaporean giant PageOne in MPH, Mid Valley. At first sight, I told myself I would live here when I grow up. I was texting Zane when flipping through this book, and told him I was reading on environmental architecture and he said I was artsy-fartsy. I called him an art fart.
DIGRESSION GRR.
HOUSE KOTILO
OLAVI KOPONEN
Koponen was listening to an interview of a Finnish film director Aki Kaurismaki, when he bent a bar of polystyrene around a central column (the fireplace). After winning the competition, he moved the cellular spaces to a separate house beside the main house. He stated that the functional solution is not based on the typology of modernism.
Themes of the everyday and festive, holy and profane, has become the basis of the planning and realization process. The house is form and material-tied, and the house is centrally made up of spatial experiences: the route of light in the house, the rhythms of the day, smells etc. realized the goal of simple and relaxed living.
Koponen finds, in vernacular architecture, the characteristics of cosiness and naturalness sprouting from simplicity. It was evident in his childhood, which he brings to life in his works.
The basic structure is made from wood, with 180 pieces of prefabricated elements for the floor and roof. (Prefabrication in architecture is extremely beneficial to the environment. It reduces carbon and energy output.) The structure is curled around a central concrete pile and are partly supported by steel constructions.
Exterior surfaces are covered by larch shingles (controlled forestry, another nod from Mother Nature) from Krasnojars, Russia, and interior surfaces are of thin, traditional Finnish aspen shingles. The floors of the ground floor are of concrete, and the surroundings have an adequate number of blue-tinted glass.
The whole structure was constructed in the manual, traditional way, without the use of machinery to lessen the impact on the environment. It took 13 months to design and realize the house. Manual construction of the house has ensured its cost to be below the average cost of the other houses of the neighbourhood.
Text and pictures from World Architecture News.