[ JVA ] Edge House

Architects: Jarmund/Vigsnæs AS Architects MNAL
Location: Kolbotn, Norway
Client: Mona Jensen, Morten Isachsen
Project Architects: Einar Jarmund, Håkon Vigsnæs, Alessandra Kosberg
Collaborator: Claes Cho Heske Ekornaas
Contractor: AS Ventilasjonsservice
Project Year: 2005
Project Year: 2006-2008
Constructed Area: 160 sqm
Photographs: Ivan Brodey, Nils Petter Dale

The Edge House is located at Kolbotn, a suburb south of Oslo.

The client, a young couple, asked for a spectacular house on a limited budget. They had purchased a challenging site with 8 meters height difference from the access road to a plateau, and they wanted a house that “looked like you could shoot a James Bond movie in it”.

To save the plateau, the building was pushed towards the eastern perimeter of the site, suspended above the slope on slender steel columns. The entrance stair rises along the slope through the house up to the plateau.

This strategy avoids costly blasting, hiding the technical connections in the stair. It saves at the same time the existing characteristics of the site, creating a dramatic interplay between volume and site. The entrance condition and the experience from the inside attempts to underline this interplay.

The compact interior is horizontally organized around the cut for the entrance stair. Bedrooms and bathrooms are effectively organized along a corridor.

The main structure is steel, with a polished concrete floor slab. The interior is clad in Birch plywood, the exterior in naturally colored fiber cement boards.

from  archdaily