For many, luxury means opulence — rich carpeting, chandeliers dripping with crystal, and silk cushions. For others, luxury is all about simplicity — with less sometimes means you get to enjoy it more. This home in Österlen, Sweden, is a perfect example of the latter. The home was once an abandoned farmhouse, which the customers found in a terrible condition. However, the location in the summer beach town could not have been better, or so the family recruited Jonas Labbé and Johannes Schotanus of LASC Studio in Copenhagen to redesign the space.
The customers, a couple from Stockholm with 2 kids, were operating with a limited budget, so Labbé and Schotanus chose to stay with a very simple substance palette, re-inventing the farmhouse by opening up the space and blending traditional and modern elements. The end result is clean, minimalistic, and just luxurious.
Here it is before the family moved in with their own furniture, allowing you to focus on the property’s architecture .
LASC Studio
The homes in this area are often built in a style that is robust, using a central courtyard to protect residents from the spacious and subtropical atmosphere. While the customers were aware of what a traditional Österlen house looked like, they wanted something that would permit them to enjoy the outdoors.
LASC Studio
Labbé and Schotanus chose to maintain the original windows and flooring, but they eliminated nearly 2/3 of the walls within the home to open the room and give it a more lofty feel. They also installed more large window openings using window frames that dissolve in the plaster, which makes the glimpses of their outdoors seamless with the rest of the house.
The group at LASC also chose to add a renovated 1960s Danish stove. The gorgeous bit adds a rustic and authentic touch.
LASC Studio
The group chose to maintain the material palette quite minimal. Very little was utilized out of walnut planks, concrete, and white plaster. “We translated this as a struggle to rethink and play the notion of refuge,” Labbé says.
LASC Studio
Although bright pops of bold orange and blue are sprinkled throughout the house, the colors are usually straightforward and bare to replicate the landscape outside. While the pale palette connects with the outdoors, the orange and blue accents throughout the home were created as elements of comfort and nostalgia — they remind the customers of their time they spent living in China and of the summer days they spent in a nearby beach.
LASC Studio
The orange and blue are used mostly in transitional spaces, and seem to peek out and disappear again as you walk throughout the house.
LASC Studio
From the very start, they chose to infuse the 1,130-square-foot house with a look that they described as”immaterial luxury” Simple pine planks line the walls and flooring leading up the bold blue staircase.
“This is a very unpretentious house,” says Labbé. “It attracts the focus of luxury back to being about simplicity and experience.”
LASC Studio
Upstairs, a hidden door lends a playful and unexpected element to some light-filled bedroom . The pine door blends right in with the paneled wall, revealing a burst of neon orange when opened. “We like working in this manner — finding solutions and expressions that seem both familiar and unexpected,” Schotanus says.
LASC Studio
After the door to the bedroom is left open, the main living room downstairs is visible — making the home feel very much like a loft. The main aim for the group was supposed to open up the house as far as you can. While part of the process was removing some portions of this structure, it also involved re-inventing the current house by opening up windows and doors from the original walls.
LASC Studio
True to contemporary style in Sweden, product and decor is kept very straightforward and sparse. However, the area is heated up by natural sunlight pouring onto rustic and cozy pine paneling.
LASC Studio
Among the customers and LASC’s favourite parts about this endeavor was that the washing house connected to the main house. Both structures were created in precisely the exact same manner — a traditional exterior structure that has playful and contemporary ideas mixed into its design.
LASC Studio
The group wanted to make sure that the beauty of this Österlen countryside will be as present from the bath house because it is in the primary house. The shower floor was made from wood so that when the shower is switched on the noise of water falling on timber recalls the natural world outside.
LASC Studio
The tub was put towards the other end of the bath house, in front of a sunlit window. The seat underneath the window is warmed concrete. The easy design puts an emphasis on the view and creates a more blurred transition between the indoors and the outdoors.
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