On an island in the Stockholm archipelago in Sweden, architect Thomas Sandell and his wife, fashion designer Anna Holtblad, have built a tiny guesthouse cabin alongside their bigger main house. It’s wedged between the rocks and the sea, and when Thomas decided to extend it he left the rocks untouched, instead of simply levelling them. Thus the house became almost a part of nature.
The couple had looked around many potential summer houses when Thomas saw this place for the first time in 1994. He fell for it right away. On that October day, when he boarded the estate agent’s boat, the season for summer houses was over. Anna decided not to come on the journey and stayed at home because the weather was so bad.
“There was rain in the air and it was windy,” recalls Thomas. “The house was the last one we were going to look at. The other people in the boat didn’t even go ashore. But I remember the feeling so clearly when I stepped on to the jetty: ‘This is it!’ I said to myself. It was just the right feeling, with the barren bedrock. The main house, a log cabin from the 1960s, was built by a Norwegian who actually dreamed of a cabin in the Norwegian mountains.” The house was in good condition, so the couple did not have to do much for it to be habitable.
There was also an existing guesthouse, which already had a building permit that had nearly expired. So Thomas decided to rebuild it: the location – right next to the sea – was simply too good not to do something more with.
“At the time, when I was a young architect, I was very careful with details, making sure the cabin didn’t extend even a centimetre bigger than was allowed,” Thomas says. The resulting cabin is long and narrow, a bit like a boat. There was room for a bunk bed, a small table, a wood stove and a small kitchen. Thomas was sure of one thing: he wanted to preserve all the existing nature and not destroy any of the rocks.
Inside, a mirrored ceiling reflects and enhances the glittering water outside – “in a Courbusier kind of way,” says Thomas. “I love to lie on the couch looking at the ceiling and watch the swans swim by.”
The mirrored ceiling was placed above a bay window, in the corner where Thomas placed his desk. From here, the sea can be seen from two sides (as well, of course, as from the ceiling).
A small ground plan may limit your options, but less so if you can make use of high ceilings, as Thomas has done to such good effect here. “I’m very happy with the result,” he says.
The interior design is eclectic in style with a mixture of his own designs, some products from the venerable Swedish interior design store, Svenskt Tenn, and many colourful Moroccan textiles.
Next to the Achille Castiglioni writing desk is an Alvar Aalto-designed folding screen. The wall-mounted lamp by Paolo Rizzatto is in an unusual bright blue colour. The rug is Mini Flag Nordic, designed by Thomas himself for Asplund, while the unusually long sofa which sits opposite the desk is from B&B Italia.
In the kitchen, the cabinet, by Josef Frank from Svenskt Tenn, is covered in bright material from Brazil. Some of the cushions are also from Svenskt Tenn, while others are from Morocco. The elm dining table with green lino top was custom-made by a local company.
There are always things that need to be done in the summer house, but Thomas confesses that it is here that he does much of his most interesting design work. He feels at his creative best when relaxing here and he and Anna spend as much time on their archipelago refuge as they can – not just in the summer, but all year round.
