The Villa Jägersro is set within the Vättlefjäll nature reserve, a 2,300-hectare recreation area located about half an hour outside of Gothenburg. Searching for a plot for a new house, architects Saga Karlsson and Edouard Boisse were lucky enough to find a rare site within this wilderness, a former hunting lodge that was too far gone to save. ‘We ended up with a dilapidated cottage and an absolutely fantastic plot,’ says Boisse. The original plan was to build a glass house, ‘a house where the surroundings creep in, and the inside and outside become one,’ Boisse recalls, ‘and then one evening we decided to camp on the plot. Not a good idea. We had seen a horror movie the day before and couldn’t sleep due to the wind in the trees. What had been beautiful during the day became spooky at night. So instead, we designed an introverted building that has the ability to surprise.’ The new house is indeed a place of introversion, where the couple and their daughter now live all year round. Based on a perfectly square plan, 16m by 16m, the house is embedded in the landscape, accessed via an external stair that leads down into an entrance hall. The slope of the approach path makes it look like the house is simply a shallow, impenetrable 1m tall structure. It would have been relatively straightforward to make the roof continue into the contours of the ground above it, but Boisse chose to make the distinction in order to avoid the need for railings. ‘The idea was not to create a disappointment for visitors but rather to give them an experience - the feeling that something small becomes big and magnificent,’ says Boisse. As you descend the entrance stairs, the scale of the house reveals itself, culminating in a view of the lake framed by the black painted timber structure. This façade has no windows, ensuring the interior reveal is a complete surprise. The black painted front doors swing open to reveal a magnificent vista, of trees, leaves and water in the summer months, and a snowy panorama in the winter. The main living spaces have a south-east aspect to take in views across the lake. To the right is a more private zone, with slightly lower ceilings and areas for sleeping, working, and washing. At the core of the house is a rectangular courtyard glazed on two sides to bring light into the centre of the plan. The kitchen, dining room and living room are all housed in a single open-plan space, orientated to receive the morning sun. Evening light makes its way into the room via the internal courtyard. Polished concrete floors unify the space as well as helping bounce the light from the windows to the walls. The kitchen is based around a freestanding stainless steel island unit, which Boisse describes as ‘a material that lives with the weather - some days it look grey, other days it shines.’ It stands in front of a run of floor-to-ceiling timber cabinets that evoke the surrounding forest. Inspired by the geometric rationality of Roman architectural Loggia, which acts as both practical and functional, Villa Jägersro’s facade towards the lake recreates the loggia. Triangulated pillars provide a convex, graphic shape and unique form while also encapsulating gutters that collect and disperse the rainwater from the flat roof. The form of the loggia provides shelter to an external decking, providing both depth and proportion to the façade. An early sketch envisioned the house as an open and transparent glass volume inspired by a 60’s Californian residence that plays with the boundary of external and internal. However, after architects and homeowners, Saga and Edouard first camped on site and saw the thriller ‘The Signs’ (Mel Gibson 2002), their sketches developed and produced the thick walls providing safety in the dark and wild environment. In the book ‘As little design as possible published in 2009, Dieter Rams from Germany writes “Having a small touch of color makes it more colorful than having the whole thing in the same color” In reference to the addition of red dots on the Tizio Lamp from Richard Sapper. Villa Jägersro however is one color; matte black. Stark contrast is created through the juxtaposition of the matte black façade and the natural and everchanging colors of the landscape. Thus, it is in fact more colorful within the wider scale of both the house and context.