Project Name: Hee House

Location: Hee, Sweden

Design Team: Studio Ellsinger

Total Floor Area: 506 m²

Completion: 2024

Photography: Christopher Hunt

Feature: Swedish architecture studio Studio Ellsinger completed the Hee House project in Hee, just south of Hamburgsund on the Swedish West Coast, creating a compact vacation home that ingeniously transforms a modest cubic form into an expansive living experience. The project is positioned within a naturally rich landscape of pines, rocks, and meadow grass, drawing inspiration from Sweden's harsh climate conditions to create an architectural work that both celebrates Scandinavian building traditions and embodies contemporary design innovation.

The project's most compelling design feature lies in its sophisticated response to a challenging 7x7-meter compact footprint—the architects masterfully handled the spatial constraints by extending vertically to 7 meters height, creating dramatic vertical space. Rather than choosing horizontal expansion, the architecture embraces vertical potential, creating a building that layers upward with the height, generating two staggered levels that each provide unique spatial experiences while maintaining seamless connection through a massive room-width bookshelf system.

The building's form strategically opens toward the south and east, optimizing exposure to natural daylight and maximizing views of the surrounding forest and fields. This thoughtful orientation ensures that the house maintains an intimate connection to the landscape while closing off to the north to avoid disturbance from neighbors and road. The building facade showcases untreated aluminum sheeting, providing superior wind and rain protection from a functional perspective while possessing modern industrial aesthetic significance.

Material selection demonstrates exceptional sensitivity to place and climate. The steep aluminum roof, custom-designed panels and windows, and locally sourced laminated timber create a tactile dialogue that maps the resilient qualities of the surrounding natural environment. The horizontal timber framework provides necessary structural support while allowing for maximized interior spatial experience, eliminating visual interference from traditional supporting beams and columns.

The project culminates in the multifunctional bookshelf design, which simultaneously serves as structural support, storage solution, spatial divider, and fireplace installation, even accommodating kitchen storage functions. The loft space provides a children's lounge area, two sleeping bunks, a sofa bed, and workspace, which can be screened off with a 4-meter-high curtain for privacy. This innovative design exemplifies how contemporary architecture can maximize spatial efficiency while providing modern living service experiences, creating a feeling that is both compact and spacious.

Design Team - Studio Ellsinger stands as a distinguished Swedish architectural practice that has established an exceptional reputation in innovative Scandinavian design. Founded by Mikael and Fanny Ellsinger in 2010 and based in Västra Frölunda, Sweden, under the creative direction of design principal Mikael Ellsinger, the firm has developed a reputation for creating innovative solutions across residential, vacation architecture, and custom design typologies.

Mikael Ellsinger brings exceptional architectural experience and deep understanding of Scandinavian building traditions to the practice. Under the leadership of founding partners Mikael and Fanny Ellsinger, supported by an expanding team including Ragnar Ellsinger and Ebba Palmqvist, the practice has garnered recognition for its meticulous attention to detail and commitment to craftsmanship. This combination of local expertise with contemporary design innovation positions Studio Ellsinger uniquely within Sweden's architectural landscape.

The firm's design philosophy emphasizes that site-specific solutions are as important as architectural execution, not rushing to standardized architectural solutions but believing that architecture should be a result of thorough understanding of environmental conditions, cultural contexts, and programmatic requirements. Through dialogue with clients, they formulate the main ingredients for the project then offer their expertise to transform ideas into reality. Studio Ellsinger believes that exceptional ideas come from collaboration with specialized consultants and artisans, they love to challenge themselves and push the design boundary further, with innovation being the key to keeping their business running.

Through this thoughtful synthesis of local material usage, understanding of traditional spatial logic, and contemporary architectural language, Studio Ellsinger has established itself as a significant contributor to Sweden's contemporary architectural discourse, creating architectural works that are both rooted in place and embrace global design vision.