In the south of Sweden, close to Lake Vättern, the architects of the Gothenburg office ‘Tailor Made Arkitekter’ have designed a self-sufficient house.
This self-sufficient house, where the base resembles a typical Swedish barn (ground red walls and gabled roof) and the upper part reminds a greenhouse (glass roof and wooden furnishings), aims at coexisting human and plants in harmony.
This self-sufficient house “Uppgrenna Nature House” is divided into two areas with different functions. On the one hand, the party ‘barn’ of the house is reserved for the daily life of its inhabitants and contains a restaurant, meeting rooms, a spa and guest rooms. As for the other part, the “greenhouse” of the building is intended for planting and growing fruit, vegetables, flowers and citrus trees. There is even a small pond and waterfall!
This self-sufficient house is not connected to any sewer network. It works through a closed irrigation system and reuses all gray and black water it produces.
It reuses all gray and black water it produces
In addition, any of the materials constituting the house does not contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They are implicated in the degradation of the ozone layer and are also recognised as harmful to human health. The house is mainly built of wood and lighting of common areas is done by solar panels.
The concept of this self-sufficient house is however not new. The idea comes from the Swedish architect Bengt Warne whose ambition was to create homes in which the residents live using natural resources such as wind, rain, sun … in the 1970s!
