Welcome to my 9th article in this ongoing series where each article is both a house feature and a sincere note of gratitude to the people who imagined it. Homes aren’t just structures, they are vessels for our stories, rituals, and sense of belonging. These articles celebrate the homes that teach us something about balance, intention, and the art of living well. Homes featured here are the reason I started Habitat Balance: the place where thoughtful design and mental well-being meet.
Below is my thank-you letter to the creator of this extraordinary house.
Out of respect for the architect as well as copyright, this article provides links to the original websites where you can see photos of this project and the other amazing projects the architect has accomplished. Any other project or company mentioned has links provided as well.
Thank You Letter – Feriehus Vacation House on the Mastrafjord by Espen Surnevik
Dear Espen and Ingvild,
Thank you!
I had another house lined up for this month. Then I watched the video of this one, and it stopped me in my tracks.
It was not the cliff, or the fjord, or the light, though all of that is extraordinary. It was learning that this house was built for family, by family. Ingvild commissioned her cousin to design the place she would retreat to. That single fact changed how I saw every other decision in the building.
Ingvild, I have never met you, and I am writing about your home as a stranger. Still, this needs saying: thank you for having the vision and the means to build something this considered, and for letting the rest of us learn from it.
Espen, thank you for building it, and for pushing for the few things your cousin did not want at first. Every good house has a moment where someone has to argue for the idea nobody asked for.
Watch the video: Vacation House on the Mastrafjord
Espen Surnevik
Built for One, Made Generous on Purpose
Here is the thing I find most moving about this house, and it took me a second viewing to understand it.
The brief was for a single person. A retreat, thirty minutes from Stavanger, for someone who wanted a place of her own on the water.
Ingvild did not build it only for herself. She talks about her nieces and nephews, about the people who would come and stay. So the house was planned from the start to work for one and to open up for many.
That is a generous way to build. Most people building alone build small and tight, for the life they have right now. She built for the people she wanted around her.
There is something else in it… A house designed by her cousin, an architect and a client who have known each other their whole lives, filled with family, becomes a place that holds a history . Those rooms will keep gathering people long after any one of us is around to see it.
Concrete Underfoot, Oak Overhead
The first thing I noticed, after the view, was the pairing of concrete floors with warm oak above.
I want that in my own house one day, and I am not sure I can justify it in purely rational terms.
The concrete is honest and practical. It takes wet boots, sand, dropped things, a decade of people coming in from the water. It does not ask anyone to be careful.
The oak does the opposite work. Overhead, where you look when you are lying down or sitting still, it is warm and soft and alive.
Hard where life happens. Warm where you rest your eyes. That is a very good instinct, and thinking that way costs nothing extra.
Open in the Middle
The social spaces sit at the centre of the plan, with bedrooms and bathrooms pushed out toward the quieter ends, oriented so no room looks into another.
This took me straight back to the Mansfield house I wrote about in the very first of these letters. Same idea, different country, different decade. Put the life of the house in the middle, and let the private rooms sit at the edges where they belong. Also, as they talk about it in the video… the design allows for views in every direction. Each window becomes a frame for a view that looks different as the environment outside changes.
It seems obvious once you see it. Most houses do not do it.
The Window That Looks at Stone
This is the detail I keep thinking about.
The house sits between two completely different things. In one direction, the open fjord and the North Sea horizon beyond it. In the other, the sheer face of the cliff it is built against.
Most architects would take the view and turn their back on the rock. You did the opposite. You placed glass openings right up against the natural wall of rock behind the house, so the geology comes inside. In your own words, the location becomes an important part of the interior and the experience of the spaces inside.
Ingvild said in the video that its like a painting that changes with rain or snow and sunshine. That is exactly right. The light shifts across that stone all day, and the wall becomes something you watch rather than something you ignore.
The rock is made of horizontal layers of hard sediment, millions of years old. The house sits against that, and the outside is clad in thin grey brick chosen to echo the colour and the layering of the stone. So the building is not placed on the landscape. It belongs to it.
It Closes When It Needs To
The plan is built on a grid of 3.5 by 3.5 metre modules, and sliding doors let parts of the house be closed off depending on how much privacy anyone needs.
I think this is quietly brilliant, and it is the thing I would steal first.
The house is built for gathering. That is the point. But being together constantly is not the same as being close, and anyone who has spent a week with extended family knows the exact moment when someone needs a door.
Most houses force a choice. Open plan, everyone in one room, all the time. Or closed rooms, everyone separate. This one refuses to choose. It becomes a single continuous space when that is what the day calls for, and a set of quiet rooms when it isn’t.
That is the flexibility I write about constantly, built at full scale, on a cliff.
How This Home Supports Habitat Balance
At its core, Habitat Balance is about the relationship between a person, their environment, and how the spaces we live in quietly shape how we think, feel, and connect.
This home embodies that:
- Together and apart: sliding doors let the house open up or close down depending on what the people inside need that day.
- Hard and warm: concrete where life is messy, oak where you rest your eyes.
- Life in the middle: social spaces at the centre, private rooms at the quiet ends.
- Rooted to its place: glass set against the rock face and brick that echoes it, so the location becomes part of the interior.
- Built for the people she wanted around her: a retreat for one, planned to hold many.
This is what balance looks like. Not perfection, but alignment between how we live and where we live.
Lessons You Can Take From This Home
Not many of us can build on a Norwegian cliff. These still apply.
- Make one room close. If you have doors, curtains, or a screen, use them on purpose. Being able to shut one part of a home off is worth more than square metres.
- Look at what is already outside. You may not have a cliff face. You have a tree, a textured wall, a patch of sky. Put your seat where you can watch it change through the day.
- Pair hard with soft. Practical surfaces where life gets messy, warm materials where you rest. A rug and a shelf will do it.
- Put the life in the middle. If your layout allows, keep the gathering space central and the quiet spaces at the edges. Most people have it backwards.
- Build for the people you want around you. Not for the life you have this month. For the one you are hoping for.
Why This Matters
We often think of mental health as something separate from our environment. The truth is that the spaces we live in shape how we feel far more than we realize.
A house that opens and closes with the mood of the people in it. A window that turns stone into something you watch. Materials chosen so nobody has to be careful. A plan built around gathering, in a house that was only ever required to hold one person.
None of that is decoration. That is a house doing its actual job.
Final Thoughts
This was built as a retreat, a place to get away from ordinary life. I keep thinking it would work just as well as a full-time home for someone trying to live intentionally. Everything in it is deliberate. Nothing is there to impress.
So thank you, Espen, for the vision and for the arguments you won. And thank you, Ingvild, for wanting something this considered, and for building it with room for everyone you love.
Did this home made you pause for a moment? You’re not alone. Take a second and ask yourself: What would you change in your own space to feel more calm, more grounded, more like yourself?
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