This beautiful site is located on the small island Ådnøy, in a fjord east of Stavanger. Our clients, four siblings, asked us to design two cabins that they could share, two each. The buildings are placed on two adjacent, rocky hill tops, overlooking the fjord.

Our main approach in placing and designing the cabins was to have as little impact on the site as possible. The sleeping rooms and bathroom are placed where we discovered a natural ditch in the rock, the living room and the kitchen are placed on two different levels, also following the original topography. The top of the sleeping room-volume provides a half-story mezzanine, used for a second living room and the master bedroom. This spatial organisation produces a very open first floor plan, yet clearly demarcated uses and privacy for the lower sleeping room.

The back wall is ”wrapped” around the living room like a shell, forming a cantilevering roof and opening the room towards the main view. Big windows extend the surroundings into the living areas. The two cabins are nearly identical but mirrored in plan solution to fit into the topography of each site and to orientate the main view away from each other and towards the rather different immediate surroundings: Mainly rock on one of the sides, birch trees on the other one.

Team: Reinhard Kropf, Moritz Groba