Holiday Home Lapinas

There are plenty of remains of old fishing villages around the Baltic Sea, most of them abandoned or used as summer cottages with very basic elements of modern comfort. One is lucky to find a place to build a modern house in these areas because of the strict building regulations protecting the fragile coast. The holiday home Lapinas in Kaltene village is a conversion of an old fisherman's court where the old stone building was enclosed in a new glass structure to make an open living area. Remains of the old wooden hut were demolished to make space for a new extension containing three bedrooms and two bathrooms overlooking the sea. The 225 sq m house is located in a beautiful landscape formed by austere elements of local nature & the sea, the sky, the stones, the sand and the birds. Just as in the surrounding environment, the essence of architecture is inseparable from the materials it is made of. Locally produced clay blocks were used to create a structure of the extension and famous Baltic Pine was chosen for roof construction, roof and facade cladding.

Reclaimed wood from the demolished building was recycled, treated with a mix of wood tar, linseed oil and mineral pigments and used in the interiors. Where needed, surfaces of monolith concrete and fibrolite blocks were insulated with eco-wool or left exposed treated only with nature friendly tints. The house is mostly hand-made as the building techniques and materials were made by local builders and craftsmen on the site. To sustain local environment, heat-pump and floor installed water pipes are used for heating. Household biological wastewater treatment plant deals with the sewage. The building occupies full width of the 1700 sq m plot along the seashore, two facades reflecting the two prominent dimensions of the sea.