How a 1,000-Year-Old Technique Made This Pavilion

These days, something old can easily become the next big thing—whether it’s music, fashion, furniture, or even construction methods. That’s the case with the guesthouse that Bengt Mattias Carlsson of Archie Design Lab and Meter Arkitektur designed for Linda Seitola Gunnarson, Pekka Seitola, and their two children. The family owns a large swath of land outside Gävle, Sweden, on a wooded peninsula that reaches out into the Baltic Sea. To blend the structure into the pastoral environment, Carlsson and builder Kaj Stefanius employed modern wood technology and 1,000-year-old Nordic building traditions, producing a pavilion that rests lightly on the land.