If an architect's intentions and restrictions could be worn on his perverbial sleeve, then the Cabinet Home would be a good example. Rintala Eggertsson Architects is led by the partnership between Sami, whose artistic view of architecture pertains to narrative along with conceptualism, and Dagur, who experiments with different ideas in building tectonics and making full scale architectonic objects. Together they have created a transportable one bedroom home with a minimalist aesthetic, equipped with a rooftop terrace that overlooks a small garden, collects rainwater, and solar energy for its habitants.
Cabinet Home is a wooden construction formed as a set of large steps from the ground towards the sky. It is made to receive rain and sunshine from above, and use these elements to create atmosphere and energy.
On ground level are the social spaces tuned to the Roman life style, with kitchen and dining opening to own garden with rain water collected to a Fontana. First floor is a living room or library, and finally in top floor bedroom offering view to the sky. The exterior is white to reflect the sunshine and make the building suit its surroundings, while the interior is a kind of a big shadow that makes it possible to rest the eye and body from the brightness and heat outdoors. The whole house can be detached into three container-sized units, and transported with normal road transport to the final location.
With this project we wanted to encourage the use of solar energy generally, and especially in areas where sunshine is plenty as in the Mediterranean countries. Secondly, our homes in Western culture are built both too big and too expensively. At the same time it is possible to build a contemporary home with totally ecological simple materials as wood and stone and earth, and to achieve higher quality of living with less square meters. Herein should lay the main focus in architecture theory and practice today, not in some formal extravagance or egocentric prestige. Architecture is the theatre of our primeval social and private behaviour, fulfilment of our biological true needs, whether we realize, accept and implement this fact or not.
Cabinet Home is based on a simple idea of combining three nature elements that are freely there to be used for no one’s loss and everybody’s gain: trees that grow by themselves, rain and sunshine that come rain or shine.
subscribe 
Email this