Karri Loop House
Margaret River, Australia - 2013 Photography: First three photos from Giulio Aristide - Peter Bennetts
Förstberg Ling
is an office for architecture and design established by Björn Förstberg and Mikael Ling in 2015 based in Sweden.
House on two stairs
Yngsjö, Sweden, 2017-2019
Located in a densely wooded plot with undulating terrain on the south-eastern coast of Sweden, the idea behind House on Two Stairs was to touch the ground very gently and to keep the intrusion of the natural landscape to a minimum. To achieve this, the narrow building is placed on the site to avoid as many trees as possible and to keep the footprint small. Slightly elevated on steel legs, the house balances on two cast-in-place concrete stairs that also include ground connections of all the utilities. The house is concieved as an enfilade of seven equally sized rooms. Each space with it's own unique view and light condition separated by walls of cross-laminated timber. The house is finished with an untreated wood panel and sheet metal roofing.
Housing for Oscar Properties
Stockholm, Sweden, 2018 - 2020 - 1440 m²
Förstberg Ling got invited and subsequently won a competition for an apartment building in Stockholm in the spring of 2018. The small plot in Nacka Strand is situated in the corner of a sloping green park, with an unobstructed view towards the sea. The municipality’s detailed development plan stipulated a fixed, angular building envelope, the use of wood in the facade, and to replace lost greenery from the park within the project. The seven-storey building includes a lower volume facing the street, two floors embedded in the slope, and two penthouse floors set back from the main volume. The irregular shape was divided into a grid of heavy columns and thick slabs extending through the facade, forming continuous ribbons of balconies. The site’s proximity to the sea called for a more durable material for surfaces exposed to the environment, which is why concrete is used for the balconies. The concrete is cast with a rough plank structure, echoing the wooden facade, with both materials also coloured in the same hue, a light pink. To replace the green from the park, the balconies also functions as big planters, with parts of them filled with soil and an integrated irrigation system providing each of the twelve apartments with its own garden.
House for mother
"House for mother" is the first house completed by Förstberg Ling, a project started in 2013 as a part of the housing exhibition in Linköping, Vallastaden 2017. The house is conceived as a dwelling and studio for Björn's mother Maria, librarian and an enthusiastic weaver. "House for mother" is a house that balances spatiality with intimate rooms - formal simplicity with strong materiality. The facade in raw corrugated aluminium creates a variable play with light and shadow during the day, a rich materiality contrasting with it's simple expression. The wooden beams and trusses along with the walls lined with plywood give warmth to the interior. The concrete floor is a durable and beautiful surface for everyday use, folded to a low bench along the perimeter of the building. The division of the house into two volumes, slightly shifted from each other, emphasizes how narrow the plot is. While standing in the open for now, the future urban context will eventually not expose much more than the gables to the neighborhood.
