Lake Mývatn Summer House

During a trip to Iceland I encountered a wide range of buildings, from vernacular structures to contemporary public establishments, designed with an adherence to the constraints of the local climate and landscape. The relationship between a building and its physical context provides opportunities for innovation when external factors converge to make conventional design practices unfeasible.

As a personal architectural experiment, I designed a summer house in the Lake Mývatn Conservation Area informed by the architectural practices observed on my trip to Iceland. The aim of this design is minimize the physical impact on the landscape through the use of a steel and mass timber frame that cantilevers over a concrete plinth cast into the bedrock. With this cantilever method, a house of 100m² can be constructed with a footprint of only 20m², avoiding unnecessary excavation.

Using traditional Icelandic architectural features such as charred timber siding and a green roof helps to visually adapt the structure to the local context, while protecting against the rainy North Atlantic climate.