The Edge House by Jarmund | Vigsnæs AS | Architecture

The Edge House by Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL

The Edge House is located at Kolbotn, a suburb south of Oslo.

The client, a young couple, asked for a spectacular house on a limited budget. They had purchased a challenging site with 8 meters height difference from the access road to a plateau, and they wanted a house that “looked like you could shoot a James Bond movie in it”.

To save the plateau, the building was pushed towards the eastern perimeter of the site, suspended above the slope on slender steel columns. The entrance stair rises along the slope through the house up to the plateau.

This strategy avoids costly blasting, hiding the technical connections in the stair. It saves at the same time the existing characteristics of the site, creating a dramatic interplay between volume and site. The entrance condition and the experience from the inside attempts to underline this interplay.

The compact interior is horizontally organized around the cut for the entrance stair. Bedrooms and bathrooms are effectively organized along a corridor. The main structure is steel, with a polished concrete floor slab. The interior is clad in Birch plywood, the exterior in naturally colored fiber cement boards.

Address: Kolbotn, Norway
Year of design: 2005
Year of construction: 2006 – 2008
Architect: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Assisted by: Claes Cho Heske Ekornaas
Contractor: AS Ventilasjonsservice
Gross area: 160 m²Photography: Ivan Brodey, Nils Petter Dale