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Stepped volumes in porous concrete and timber carve courtyards, niches, and shifting sightlines in a Danish forest near Elsinore.
Under the oak and beech canopy in Gurre Forest, sunlight arrives in fragments—brief patches that slide across the ground as the leaves move. The site sits near Elsinore (Helsingør), a coastal city at the northeastern tip of Denmark’s island of Zealand, facing Sweden across the Øresund strait. House in Gurre, by Kim Lenschow, Jonas Fredskov, and Adam Marcel Nielsen, is organized around that shade, those partial views, and the closeness of the woods.
Instead of one continuous mass, the house is composed of equal volumes that step back from one another. That move does two things at once. Outside, it creates small courtyards that catch specific pieces of the forest. Inside, it produces pockets of privacy within an open plan—places where you can sit, read, cook, or work without feeling like you’re living in a single uninterrupted room.
Setbacks and courtyards
The setbacks aren’t decorative. Each shift in the plan makes a niche with its own orientation: one opening toward the deeper woods, another turned toward a thinner edge of trees, another receiving softer, ambient light. Those exterior pockets work like outdoor rooms—protected, open to the air, and useful across seasons because the surrounding volumes block wind and frame views.
From inside, the same indentations become spatial anchors. They break up long wall runs and give the house a sense of sequence: you move from one condition to the next rather than crossing a single field of space. The forest is present throughout, but never as a single panoramic gesture. It arrives in pieces—tree trunks close to glass, a patch of ground cover, a darker band of shadow where the canopy thickens.
Split levels in the open plan
The house’s volumes are described as equal, and that equality shows up as a legible rhythm. There’s a steadiness to the layout: similar-sized bays repeated and adjusted through small shifts, rather than one dominant room surrounded by leftover space. That clarity matters in a wooded setting where exterior reference points can feel repetitive; inside, the plan stays easy to understand.
The floor levels do some of the zoning work without turning the house into a collection of closed rooms. By shifting elevations, the open plan is subdivided into zones that feel distinct—slightly raised, slightly lowered, tighter, taller—while still allowing conversations and daylight to carry across the whole interior. Changes in ceiling height reinforce that variety. A lower zone can feel suited to sitting or sleeping; a taller one can hold a table, a gathering, or the messiness of everyday living without feeling cramped.
A courtyard at the core
At the heart of the plan is a central courtyard, a bright void inspired by the way a forest clearing makes space for light to drop through the canopy. It’s a practical move as much as an atmospheric one. With trees shading the site during leaf season, daylight can be scarce at ground level. The courtyard draws it inward, letting the center of the house stay usable even when the perimeter is cool and dim.
The main living area is oriented toward the forest floor, keeping the daily view close and grounded: bark texture, leaf litter, small changes in moisture and color after rain. It’s a different relationship than the typical “look out over a landscape” posture. Here, the house meets the woods at eye level and at walking pace. You can step out, cross a courtyard, and feel the temperature shift under the trees.
Porous concrete blocks, timber frame
The stepping back on the exterior translates into a stepped logic inside. Rather than slicing straight through partitions, the interior sections shift in layers, revealing the next space gradually while exposing the wall build-up. That approach makes depth feel real, not implied. You notice thickness at openings, the way one plane returns to another, and how a corner is assembled rather than hidden.
Material choices reinforce that directness. The house is built from porous concrete blocks, with a timber frame resting on top. It’s an industrial palette placed in a very organic setting, and the contrast is part of the point: the structure is robust, a little blunt, and stable against the softness and constant change of the forest. The building’s tectonic language stays clear—blocks read as blocks, frame reads as frame, joints and layers remain understandable—so living in the house means living with construction that doesn’t pretend to be something else.
