The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Boxing clever
This Swedish holiday home is a modern masterpiece
AMONG THE black-and-white maritime cabins and terracotta cottages of the fishing village of Fjällbacka, Ingrid Bergman’s favourite holiday destination, change is afoot. Most of the houses here are cute Swedish coastal chalets, but despite its modernist aesthetic, the boxy Villa Pineus manages somehow to blend in: its chunky, weathered, silvery form sits seamlessly within the surrounding landscape, blurring the boundaries between outside and in.
Villa Pineus, about five hours’ drive from Stockholm on Sweden’s western archipelago, is the holiday home of Andrew Duncanson – a Scot who moved to Sweden just over 20 years ago – his Swedish partner, Isaac Pineus, and their twin sons Marc and Tom, eight. It’s a welcome haven away from the family’s busy life in the city, where the couple run Modernity, a leading gallery dealing in 20th-century furniture, ceramics, glass, lighting and jewellery.
The area has been a Pineus family retreat since 1945, when Isaac’s grandparents bought the land on which the house stands; his parents and sister also have holiday homes next door. When the couple decided to build their
own six years ago, they went for a modern, unconventional style, enlisting the help of the Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh. ‘Gert has designed lots of beautiful buildings; they are very clean and simple but always have a touch that brings them to life, and this is what we had in mind,’ says Pineus. ‘In Stockholm we live in a traditional flat from the 1890s with detailed cornicing and polished parquet wooden floors, so we thought it would be good to have a contrast. We wanted something contemporary, not a pastiche.’
Villa Pineus is ruggedly and unashamedly contemporary, clad in larch and arranged in ‘boxes’ over three levels, with a central staircase separating the living spaces to the left of the main entrance and the bedrooms, sauna and shower room to the right. Impressive, 11ft-high windows open from the main living space out to the terrace, which is shaded from the sun’s glare by a timber brise-soleil. A roof terrace, hidden to the exterior, offers a tranquil view west to the sea, making it the ideal spot from which to enjoy the sunset on long summer evenings.
If the spirit of the great modernist architect Le Corbusier is writ large in the exteriors, then the interiors feature a roster of 20th-century designers, a reflection of the owners’ day jobs at Modernity, which Duncanson established in 1998. Set against a subtle backdrop of white and cement walls, locally sourced oak floors and built-in benches, is a gallery’s worth of classic furniture by the likes of Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari, Isamu Noguchi and Gio Ponti.
However, the couple insist that despite its pedigree designers, this is a lively family home, particularly over the summer holidays. ‘It’s a great social house,’ says Pineus. ‘It is boundary-less. In the summer the doors are open all through the day so the boys can run in and out, and my sister and her children can come and go as they please. It’s not a quaint house, like so many in the village. It’s a break with tradition but it really works; it has a very raw quality, which echoes the rough landscape of the coast.’
For Duncanson, his adopted home offers some similarities to Scotland, but also some cultural differences: ‘Swedes are a lot more reserved than Scots, but I find that in the summer months everyone comes out of their shell and the place comes alive,’ he says. ‘This archipelago is unique. We spend our days out on the water; many of the islands are uninhabited and we can usually have one to ourselves. It’s a wonderful way to escape from the hectic life of the city.’