Luxury Homes: Olle Lundberg’s Project

Sunday, 7 am. Our film crew has been wandering for twenty minutes in a sticky fog that envelops warehouse buildings, huge conveyors and cranes in the port of San Francisco. The atmosphere here is as oppressive as in the movie “Stalker”. Finally, the goal is achieved – we are at berth 54, where Olle Lundberg’s Maritol ferry is moored. In front of the gangway leading to the side of an old, here and there, rusty ship, there are tubs of plants and a mailbox. It is from here that we must go to the architect’s country house.

Olle and his wife Mary Brewer made the decision to settle on the water six years ago – after long and unsuccessful attempts to buy an apartment on solid ground. Real estate prices that year caused a shock, and then Lundberg matured an alternative plan: “I was looking for an old boat on the Internet and suddenly I thought: why don’t we buy a whole ship and convert it into housing ?!” As it turned out, it was easy to do this: “When the ship is decommissioned, the owners are trying to get rid of it as soon as possible. All international ports are packed with old ships.

• Photo 1. Architect Olle Lundberg.
• Photo 2. The house is built on the foundations of the cottage that used to stand on this site. Outside, it is lined with old boards that have darkened from time to time, bought in the secondary building materials market.
• Photo 3. The home of Olle Lundberg and his wife Mary is a two-hour drive from San Francisco. The terrace overlooks the forested coastal hills.
• Photo 4. On all sides, the Lundberg house is surrounded by a dense forest.

There were no problems with transportation (Maritol was moored off the coast of Iceland). The team we hired got down to business with great enthusiasm – these guys felt like real Vikings going to conquer the New World. ” The 600-mile journey was completed in seven weeks, after which the ferry, safely delivered to San Francisco, was completely refurbished. Lundberg and Brewer spent more than XNUMX thousand dollars on it, but the end of the work, instead of a holiday, turned out to be bitter disappointment: the city authorities flatly refused to register the ferry as housing.

In the end, Olle and Mary managed to get out of the situation, finding a loophole in the law. The architect’s wife obtained permission to equip an office of her recruiting firm at Maritol, and since no one forbids them to be at work at night, the spouses safely live on the ferry around the clock – from Monday to Friday. But on weekends, when the offices are closed, they have to move to a country house located two hours from San Francisco. This is where our film crew is heading.

Before getting into the architect’s huge black jeep, we suggest that he stop by the nearest restaurant for a bite to eat on the lane. Olle vehemently rejects this plan, promising to treat us with his signature steaks upon arrival. And then he declares that his hobby for cooking helped him a lot in building the house: “Every weekend I invited friends and employees of my bureau for a barbecue, and then invited them to work a little to whet their appetite. Oddly enough, no one refused! “

• Photo 1. In the background is a pool made from a huge barrel. In the image and likeness of this object, another pool is arranged – a smaller one and built into the wooden deck deck.
• Photo 2. There is a small vegetable garden near the house where you can pick a bunch of fresh herbs for lunch.
• Photo 3. A mezzanine was built in the double-height living room, where the master bedroom is located.
• Photo 4. Most of the kitchen furniture was designed by the owner himself. Storage systems – open; numerous bottles, cans, pots, bowls and bowls are on display, as is customary in traditional country houses.

While the architect is reminiscing, we manage to pass the Golden Gate Bridge, drive through Marin County and enter Bodega Bay – in this iconic place Hitchcock filmed his “Birds”. From the road you can see the roof of the school and the church – it was here that the actress Tippy Hedren was attacked by black crows … Meanwhile, Lundberg continues the story: “From the very beginning, Mary and I decided that we would build our country house ourselves, and almost did not use the services of workers. In general, I consider myself not so much an architect as a craftsman. It is important for me that the things I have created are flawless not only from an aesthetic, but also from a practical point of view. Whatever the design of Lundberg Design, be it a whole house or just a doorknob, all work is done by our own workshop. This is the only way to get a truly high-quality result. “

The desire to complete the lion’s share of the work associated with building a house with your own hands resulted in five years of hard work. Olle and Mary devoted all their free time to this business. “We came to the construction site every weekend and spent the night in a tent, which we pitched right in the middle of the unfinished living room,” recalls Lundberg.

At this moment we are just approaching the cottage, which, like a ghost, emerges from the dense fog. The first thing that catches your eye is the dark, almost black cladding of the facade. The architect’s dwelling looks much older than its age; and the point here is clearly not only that the tree got wet under the rain that was playing out in earnest. In this project, Olle basically used only secondary building materials and thereby saved them from inevitable disposal. “I love giving new life to old houses,” says the architect, lighting a fire in the fireplace. “These boards are beautiful because they retain traces of time and bad weather.”

• Photo 1. Olle Lundberg preparing her famous steaks.
• Photo 2. Dinner Zone. A table designed by Olle is surrounded by chairs from Artifort. In the background is a staircase leading to the mezzanine bedroom.
• Photo 3. The pool is 7,5 m in diameter and 4 m in depth.
• Photo 4. Olle designed the bed for the mezzanine bedroom himself.

Most of the furniture in this house is also with history. It was made to order for other projects of the architect, but for various reasons it did not find its application there. For example, the aluminum coffee table was intended for The Diva Hotel, and the cypress side table was for The Slanted Door restaurant (the owners rejected it, considering it too narrow). But the most interesting story has to do with the pool built into the terrace. “One fine day I found a huge cistern next to the still unfinished house. It turned out that my carpenters brought it here from a nearby ranch, covered it with boards and used it as a roost during a smoke break. To turn the container into a pool, I had to take it apart and cover it with a special water-repellent compound. Finally, the architect advises: “Look around: suddenly what you are looking for lies right under your feet!”

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