A home is the realisation of an idea. *** Settling, white dew does not discriminate, each drop its home Sōin (1604-1682) ______________________________________________ People are different, and it can be said that this fact eternally prevents the world from turning grey. There are as many different ways of living as there are ways to build a dwelling. Some people seek out the heights: they long for the prospect and oversight which can be found in living high up in the air, where they can look out at the open landscape each morning and revel in all that appears. Others prefer refuge: they dream of a protected house in a forest glade, where they can feel the comforting presence of the trees surround their living space. Some people want adaptability, and wish to retain the ability to pack up and move at a moment’s notice according to their whims. Others wish to be as close as possible to friends and family, in an expansive house that has rooms together for them all. I think that amongst t

There is something especially enticing about a roof that is covered with plants. ______________________________________________ This poor grass-roofed hut of old brushwood may sound miserable, but I very quickly found it altogether suiting my taste. Saigyō (1118-1190) ______________________________________________ There is a variety of understandable reasons for the common dissatisfaction with modern life that many people have increasingly begun to perceive, but it can be said that a significant contributing factor is a growing sense of alienation - both from ourselves as human, biological organisms and from the environments that we inhabit. All too often the spaces where we live are made of synthetic materials with foreign, boring textures and mystical, untraceable origins. We can perhaps imagine the industrial processes that were required to take place somewhere else to produce them and transport them to us, but they do little in themselves to turn our attention to the richness of th

*** Spring rain on the pagoda roof and the shakuhachi’s sound. Will I ever see the Chekiang tidal bore again? Grass sandals, broken bowl, and no one knows. Treading on cherry blossoms, I will trudge across yet one more bridge. Po Ching (1884-1918) ______________________________________________ The sky is not always calm, and storms come along. It is commonly said that one must obtain «a roof over one’s head». The roof is the component of the built environment which is perhaps most closely tied to the concept of shelter. The most primitive dwellings are little more than a roof supported by a simple structure. Many roof surfaces are invisible. They are nothing but a plate covered by gravel on top of some walls, or they rest on top of a building like an awkward hat. They cannot be felt, and as a result they offer no sense of shelter. They are nothing compared to the sense of protection one feels standing underneath a tree with a majestic canopy of leaves, or from under an outcrop of rock,

Going foward I intend to publish a series of visual narratives and essays which I have been working on lately. I am going to post these also over on my Substack, "Archetypal Spaces". *** The birds have vanished from the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. Li Po (701-762) Most good ideas begin on a rooftop. Occasionally at night, perhaps in the early evening, you feel the pull to climb up onto a roof and survey the surrounding world. Up there, it seems that nothing is in the way. Above you the stars stretch out into the cosmos, and they merge with the glow of a distant city. Your mind can flow as freely as the wind, and your ambition wanders with no boundaries. Down on the ground, your perspective is unconsciously limited. It never takes long before your gaze becomes blocked by a hedge, a car or a wall. The world feels small and constrained; you can never move freely. Up on the rooftops on the other hand, you can br

Recently I have completed a concept for a new house on the island of Bjorøyna in Øygarden kommune in the archipelago south of Bergen. This has been a fun place to design. The site itself is quite large, but it has somewhat awkward boundaries which partially lie along the walls of a neighbouring house. Most of the western part of the site is covered by a forest patch, and the bedrock is close to the surface everywhere. To the north is a large unbuilt forested area. The brief called for a relatively small house, around 180 m2. Immediately it became clear that the best strategy was to place a new house furthest to the northeast, where it can lie as close as possible to the existing access road in connection with the other buildings. In this way, we are able to save almost all of the existing trees and build primarily on terrain which already has been affected by previous activity. At the same time the house receives a fantastic connection with the coherent forest patch to the north. The c

Some drawings from my sketchbooks, May-June. Japanese roofs, a cool block on Ullernåsen, and cabins in the Pacific Northwest.