For most people contemplating a move, thoughts of packing the portable pieces of their lives in boxes rarely engender much enthusiasm. For Markus and Kajsa Moström and their three children, however, such thoughts were greeted happily as they and their
architects devised a way to box things up in a much more inviting way.

Having made the decision to leave their apartment in Stockholm, Sweden, for a then-naked knoll in the forests of Nacka (a 15-minute car ride away), they placed the process of designing their new home in the trusted hands of their longtime friends at the architecture firm Claesson Koivisto Rune.

In an admirable effort to put vision to paper, Markus (a graphic designer) produced a multidisciplinary mash note of a brief brimming with images, illustrations, and text. Upon learning of Markus’s mental image of the project (“It is night and you are approaching the house. It lights up like a spaceship stranded on top of the hill”) lead architect Deta Gemzell and her team had a perfect picture of the direction they would take.

Employing a layout technique any graphic designer would recognize, the architects drew up plans for an elongated box-shaped house using a flexible grid system based on the standardized dimensions of available building materials. The system resulted in two important benefits during construction: maximum use of available space, and minimum use of available budget. A grid of a different kind was kept in mind as well: Using only locally sourced materials, and constructed under the strict energy-conservation standards set by the Swedish government, the No. 5 House has all of its energy needs met from renewable sources.

Its bedrooms are arranged like the compartments of a Japanese puzzle box, each featuring a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. A partially enclosed terrace creates an outdoor extension of the living room, and further blurs the boundaries between box, birch, and beyond.