Scandinavia plays a leading role in the world of modern architecture and design. In the last hundred years famous designers and architects have developed a very unconventional style that breaks with the eclectic trends in the beginning of 20th century. Personalities like Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen have dissociated themselves from old traditions and created a radical new, minimalistic design.
What means the Scandinavian style?
The roots of the Scandinavian style can be found in the traditional building style of the northern countries of Europe, as Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Island. The houses are made out of wood and painted with the typical red colour Faluröd, named by the little village Falun in Sweden, were it was produced from the overburden of the local copper mine. These traditional wooden construction guarantees a perfect insulation against the strong wintertime.
All began in 1919 with the foundation of the rule breaking Bauhaus in the German city of Weimar. Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe formed a democratic idea of a non academic design school, which is be considered as the start of the modernism. At the same time, De Stijl marked the same tendency in the Netherlands. In Scandinavia, ten years later the social democratic thinking favoured the spirit of a modern, unconventional design, too. First the Finn Aalto and the Dane Jacobsen revolutionized the building and design style. From the Fifties on, when after the 2nd World War people had to renovate their buildings with low budget, good and worthy design had to be combined with simplicity and industrial production.
This idea had a great success and is today distributed on the whole globe. Mass-production like for the famous, largest furniture store in the world, made Scandinavian design affordable and well known even in the very south of Europe in countries like Spain and Italy. The positive properties of wooden furniture and even complete buildings made of wood are valued today all over the world.
What means a Scandinavian house exactly?
Most people think in Scandinavian houses as the traditional, red painted little house in the countryside. But, of course, today’s Scandinavian architecture offers you a impressive wide range of different designs, colours and sizes. If you compare the typical New England style in the East Coast of the United States with the houses made in Scandinavia, you will find a lot of common ground as this country house in England shows. That causes a hype of these houses in Scandinavia and vice versa Swedish houses are each year more successful in UK and other countries. Why?
The main benefits of Scandinavian houses they own thanks to the unique properties that they are offering: similar to northern furniture manufacturing, construction costs are low, and they are eco-friendly, because they are made of natural wood from renewable, local cultivation. This makes them highly energy efficient. Often they have a veranda or a winter garden, which brings the maximum of available light to the interior on short winter days. To avoid transmission lost of heating energy, the houses are equipped with triple-glazing and extremely elevated levels of insulation in the outer walls to reach the passive house standard. Wood itself is a warm material that guarantees in combination with an eco-friendly insulation material like sheep’s wool or cellulose a warm and healthy interior. The economic light-frame construction helps to cut down the construction costs in comparison with a massive house made of bricks or concrete.
The main optical characteristics of a Scandinavian house are the wooden façades with vertical or horizontal planks that are painted in light yellow, light yellow or white. The traditional dark red can be seen principally only in Finland or Sweden. Typically they have lattice and dormer windows. Outside of Scandinavia they normally are called country house style.
The Swedish house of today
Due to strong energy-saving programs and to protect the environment, today’s houses must be built from natural, local materials and with a efficient insulation to reduce dramatically the energy consumption. In combination with renewable energy sources as solar panels or geothermic pumps the Scandinavian architecture offers the best solution of an eco-friendly house at an economic price.
Summary
If you think of a passive, low energy or even active house at a affordable price, a Scandinavian house is the perfect way to reach it. Made completely from natural materials, it won’t have a negative impact to the environment. The house provides you a special charm thanks to the warm-looking interior together with the typical decoration in northern colours, which you barely can find in other houses.