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https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/mar/09/outside-in-the-extraordinary-home-inside-a-giant-greenhouse-in-norway>
"Situated on the family farmstead, surrounded by trees and pasture, stands the
extraordinary glasshouse where architect Margit Klev and her young family have
made their home. Here, Klev has created a house within a house, placing her
bespoke building inside a vast glass barn, delivered as a kit from Denmark and
erected on site in just two weeks. This glass shell not only protects the
family home inside it, but also shelters an indoor garden and garden rooms,
where Klev can nurture plants and trees that would never usually survive a
Norwegian winter.
“Inside the greenhouse I can grow grapes, apricots, nectarines and peaches,”
says Klev, whose two greatest passions are architecture and gardening. “I can
also grow a lot of herbs around the other plants: parsley, salvia, melissa…
herbs that don’t grow so well outside. And I can also use the greenhouse to
grow small plants from seeds that I can plant out in the open later on, in the
spring or early summer.”
Klev grew up on the farm, situated in a rural area to the west of Drammen and
Oslo. Now her mother and father, as well as her brother and sister, all live
close by. She initially studied ecology before switching her attention to
architecture at university in Trondheim, followed by a year in Stockholm. She
worked with two practices in Oslo before co-founding her own business, known as
Outline, based in Drammen. The Greenhouse Home was one of her first independent
projects and also one of the most personal, shared with her husband, physicist
and hydrogen specialist Arnstein Norheim, and their two young children.
Having inherited a parcel of land on the farm, one of Klev and Norheim’s
greatest wishes was to be able to enjoy the feeling of being outside and
immersed in the natural world all year round – including even the harsh
Norwegian winters. The solution was the super-sized greenhouse, manufactured by
Drivadan in Denmark, and delivered to the site as a vast kit of parts, ready
for assembly on a pre-prepared concrete pad. The resulting glass shed is 38ft
tall with an integrated ventilation system providing natural cooling via roof
vents during the warmer months. This glass shell provided a secure and stable
environment, beneath which Klev was able to create her own unique home, the
indoor garden and a collection of garden rooms."
Via
Positive.News
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
