Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Villa RBDVD

This is a project by RB Arkitektur and it is located at Saltsjö-Boo, Stockholm, Sweden. Project's program: Single family house. There are eleven images for Villa RBDVD.

: © Ulrika Ekblom

Project details

Project name: Villa RBDVD
Location: Saltsjö-Boo, Stockholm, Sweden
Program: Single family house
Area: Site area: 1,700 m2 • Built-up area: 130 m2
Year: Completion: 2003
Project by: RB Arkitektur
Team: Principal designer: Rahel Belatchew Lerdell

Project images

Designer's statement

RBDVD-house is a comment on the Swedish tradition of wooden single family houses where the highly standardized prefabricated industry has formed not only the construction process, but also the architectural expression. This wooden construction is characterized by a simple and clearly defined structure and space division where the proportions of the plan, the façade and the internal subdivisions are interrelated through repetitions and changes in scale of an initial rectangular form.

RBDVD-house is situated in a residential area, high above street-level. The rocky nature of the site was decisive as for the organization and orientation of the different rooms. The ground floor, facing north on one side and the rock on the other, provides room for the night (bedroom, bath, technique). An optimal exploitation of the surface and a maximum amount of light into the different rooms were the primary objectives. In this purpose, large windows are placed at the back, opening up to a view of rough stones illuminated by night. Likewise, the ceiling height which is above standard enables narrow passages which in themselves create a notion of space between two volumes rather than two walls. This is accentuated by an integrated lighting into the wall between the bathroom and the passage. During the day, the translucent surface lets daylight pass through the building. At night, the illuminated wall brings daylight to the core of the house.

On the upper floor, one single room hosts the kitchen and the living-room. Wide sliding windows at the back, to the south, open up the room to a large and sunny terrace. At the opposite side, facing the street, a long horizontal opening, like a slit, leaves at this height only the treetops to be seen, shutting out the neighborhood. With a ceiling height of 3.5m, the upper floor contains a room within the room – a box in the box – in the shape of the kitchen which has its own lower ceiling detached from the rest. The lack of doors to the kitchen along with the bar counter running along the whole of its length, the same way the horizontal window in the living-room opens to the north, create an interaction between the bigger room and the smaller, the two only differing in scale. The relationship between the two create an interface where spatial notions of isolated and integrated shift depending on the current activity, the lighting and the point of view.