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A holiday retreat in Estonia blends into the landscape

Arhitektuuribüroo Eek & Mutso designed a summer house inspired by local architecture: a discrete dwelling that transforms and integrates perfectly into nature.

The holiday home designed by Arhitektuuribüroo Eek & Mutso is located in a wooded area in Vääna-Jõesuu, near Tallinn, Estonia. Distinctive to the house is its gabled shape, used in the 1970s for the area’s cottages and made open and dynamic for this project.

A dwelling, the Kuku-Ranna Summer House, which blends into the landscape, designed to escape from view and hide among pine trees. The black wooden facade is treated with the Japanese yakisugi technique, which increases the durability of the material by lightly burning its surface. The house, uniform and apparently static, is transformed when the pitches open up to become side roofs that protect from sun and provide outdoor spaces for socialising.

The house, located on top of a concrete volume, has several entrances: two are along the east and west elevations, accessible from a path running through the vegetation, the other to the south becomes accessible once side panel is “lifted”.

The interior space, on two levels, is divided on the ground floor into a living room with kitchen – the central area and focus of the home –, a bathroom with sauna and a bedroom, and hosts on the upper floor two further rooms with small studies. The main material remains wood, visible on the ceiling and walls but used in shades of white and beige that contribute to bright and airy interior.

Arhitektuuribüroo Eek & Mutso, Kuku-Ranna Summer House. Photo Toomas Tuul

Details

  • Vääna-Jõesuu, Harju County, Estonia
  • Arhitektuuribüroo Eek & Mutso