Villa Koppar

Villa Koppar is a single-family home completed in 2023 in Degerby, Inkoo, about 45 km west of Helsinki. Built to replace its predecessor, this two-part complex includes a main building and an annex, both constructed from straw-based elements.

Read the article in Finnish here.

To support the lives of the home’s young owners, the annex contains a study, a small exercise room, and a carport. The living room, dining room, kitchen, and sauna facilities are in the main building, on the upper floor to maximise the views of the surrounding countryside and rolling hillsides. An open fireplace serves as a central design piece: constructed with only one closed wall, it enhances all main spaces with the warmth and visual appeal of a crackling fire. The bedrooms are downstairs, adjacent to a quaint garden that dates back to the site’s preceding residence.

Design goals and solutions

As the young couple chiefly financed their home with a mortgage, the cost estimate needed to be accurate and their budget realistic. These realities then served as starting points for the architectural design. Despite the building’s compact size, its interiors feel spacious and are designed to allow easy modification. None of the spaces have strictly predefined uses, allowing the residents instead to change things freely as needed. This design solution has proved a hit with the owners, who applaud the inspiring house as a personal source of creativity and ideas.

Villa Koppar is a testament to the benefits of meticulous planning and close cooperation between customers, builders, and suppliers. Besides being cost efficient, the team specifically sought solutions that are naturally environmentally friendly and create a calm atmosphere without unnecessary clutter.

Structural and technical solutions

Villa Koppar’s construction solutions focus on durability and fault tolerance. The main building’s outer walls are single-material straw elements (Ecococon), i.e., agricultural surplus straw compacted into wooden frames (U-value of the outer wall 0.12 W/m2K), which provides excellent thermal insulation without compromising on the ideal of a single material. This increases the building’s energy efficiency and longevity. On site, installation was speedy as the individual straw elements were pre-assembled into larger units in a nearby storage hall. The short construction time also meant no separate weather protection was needed.

Indoors, the straw elements are coated with two thick layers of clay plaster that balance air humidity and temperature. The clay continues seamlessly from the walls to the ceilings to further enhance the harmony of the space. All dry spaces on both storeys have a solid clay floor from Luonnonbetoni with integrated water-circulating, geothermal heating. The façades are clad with spruce board treated with silicon-based Organowood, a protective coating that allows the wood to gain a natural grey patina that complements the surrounding landscape of forest and rock. The roof is Ruukki’s machine-seamed sheet metal treated with GreenCoat, a bio-based coating that improves durability and environmental friendliness.

Construction project

• Planning began 09/2021
• Building permit granted 03/2022
• Construction began 05/2022
• Taken into use 06/2023

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