A 1930s family house in Oslo, re-planned so that every room the family uses daily faces the low, brief northern light.
The existing plan put the kitchen and living spaces on the dark side of the house. We turned the plan around its stair, moved the daily rooms to the south and west, and let the colder north hold the quiet ones — a study, a spare room, storage.
Materials were kept few and honest: quarter-sawn oak, hand-troweled lime plaster, and blackened steel left to patina. Nothing is clad that doesn't need to be.
Client
Kessler family
Location
Oslo, Norway
Year
2024
Scope
Interior · re-plan
Area
240 m²
Status
Completed
Collaborators
Berg & Reid, structure
Photography
Studio Void
THE SITE
Reading the light before drawing a wall.
Oslo's winter light is low and short. We spent a full day on site tracking where the sun actually landed, room by room, hour by hour, before proposing a single change to the plan.
That reading became the brief. The kitchen moved to catch the late afternoon; the main bedroom now takes the first light; and a north-facing study keeps the even, shadowless light that's best for work.
“The brief was a house that never felt cold, even through a Nordic winter. Everything followed from that one sentence.”
Elin Kessler — Founder & Principal Architect
Three materials, chosen for how they age.
Timber
White oak, quarter-sawn
Used underfoot and in every fitted piece — chosen to warm the north light and to wear in, not out.
Plaster
Lime, hand-troweled
On the walls that carry load — left in its raw finish so the surface holds and shifts the light through the day.
Metal
Blackened steel
Stair, shelving, and hardware — left to patina rather than lacquered, so it records the years of use.
PROCESS
Sketch to site.
01
Sketch
Hand studies of light and section, before any plan is fixed.
02
Plan
The re-plan resolved around the existing stair and structure.
03
Render
Material and light tested in full, room by room, against the site reading.
04
Built
On site through construction — one studio answerable to the last detail.