Abbekås - a village on the southern coast of Scania, shaped by the sea, cultivation, and the rhythms of seasonal life. A community with a maritime history, a grounded building tradition, and a proud simplicity. There is no room here for the overly refined or carefully staged. Instead, there is a raw pragmatism: function before form, materials allowed to age naturally, visible structures, and temporary solutions that become permanent.
The new house is a response to that context. It borrows characteristics from the many layers of the local building heritage - the greenhouse, the traditional Scanian longhouse, the wagon shed but also from maritime traditions. These influences appear in the details: tension rods, blocks and tackle, deck fittings. Elements normally found on boats are brought into the house’s construction and architectural expression. The result is a robust, technical poetry.
The windows reference the surrounding neighborhood - but also Lewerentz. The large externally mounted window is both a tribute (Ulf Lewerentz lives next door) and a way of presenting the house as an assemblage, a kind of collage of references. The materials tell an important part of the story as well: the house is built with untreated surfaces, raw timber, and a restrained palette of colors. Everything is honest, minimally processed, and closely connected to the landscape.
The fact that Abbekås has long been regarded as a peripheral community - a place for those who did not quite fit into the more orderly Scanian towns - adds another layer of meaning. The house engages with that spirit and takes it seriously. It chooses not to refine or beautify, but rather to amplify the irregular and the functional. Everything is left visible: joints, fittings, connections. It is a tribute to what already exists - a new body built according to an old logic. The property is in a constant state of change. There is no master plan here. Needs shift from year to year: small children, grown children, many guests, few guests, girlfriends and boyfriends. If there is a common thread, it is the dream that everyone should want to be here.
The site originally contained a 35-square-metre summer house built in 1967. It is still there. In the first phase, that small house accommodated an entire family. Today it remains, extended with a greenhouse-like living room, a courtyard, and finally a larger bedroom.
