Tour a Coastal Norway Home Made of Wood Flooring Scraps
Painting

Tour a Coastal Norway Home Made of Wood Flooring Scraps

At first glance, Saltviga House looks like a minimalist, shingled vacation home perched atop a rocky bluff on Norway’s southern coast—but the exterior cladding is so much more complex than it seems. Zoom in and you’ll see over 20,000 stainless steel screws and not a single traditional shingle. Each piece of wood on the outside is actually leftover German oak from Dinesen‘s flooring factory; on the inside, it’s all imperfect Douglas fir planks. Yes, the entire house was built with scraps.

This impressive architectural feat is the work of Stockholm-based studio Kolman Boye Architects. Founders Erik Kolman Janouch and Victor Boye Julebäk had previously collaborated with the sustainability-minded Danish flooring brand, so the duo had a feeling they would be on board. “They’re very keen on using all of the trees in their projects,” Erik says of Dinesen. “They want to use everything from the trunk so nothing is wasted. So for them, this was like a godsend. They loved the idea.”

Convincing the homeowners of the plan was easy, too, since they were given the opportunity to purchase Dinesen’s high-quality materials for a fraction of the price. And while they ended up spending more on labor to transform discarded wood into evenly sized pieces for the facade, they still came out on top with a one-of-a-kind, eco-friendly house that’s in harmony with its rugged surrounds.

Let’s take a tour.

Photography by Johan Dehlin.

kolman boye architects didn&#8\2\17;t want to disrupt the rough, wild lands 14
Above: Kolman Boye Architects didn’t want to disrupt the rough, wild landscape, so they made sure the structure would blend in with the boreal forest. “It’s a hidden house, in a way,” says Erik. “It disappears nicely because of this camouflage facade. It looks so natural and it has the same color as the bark of these trees. If you go by boat and you pass outside, you barely see the house.”

the oak exterior will continue to silver and weather over time, helping it to f 15
Above: The oak exterior will continue to silver and weather over time, helping it to further fade into the environment. “The roof has already turned gray, so it sort of looks uniform in color,” says Erik. “But the facade has so many shades of brown and gray. It’s beautiful the way it ages. We wouldn’t expect that there are so many different colors in a piece of oak.”