When Bolle Tham and Martin Videgård opened their Stockholm office 10 years ago, the established architecture in Sweden was, according to them, boring. “We wanted to provide something different from what was out there, something more progressive and contemporary,” Tham recalls. But rather than offering a radical alternative, the twosome relied on subtle shifts in scale and unexpected material choices to create buildings whose surprising simplicity turned out to be a refreshing twist.

Like most young architecture firms just starting out, Tham & Videgård worked mainly on residential projects, developing a niche designing small summer houses in remote locations — a common building type in Sweden, as city dwellers escape to the countryside to enjoy the natural landscape following the long, cold winters. The remoteness of these settings presented both challenges for construction and opportunities for innovative design. For two houses on the outer islands of the Stockholm archipelago inaccessible to car traffic (and thus difficult to supply with building materials), Tham & Videgård built lightweight structures around compact but clever floor plans. For one, on Söderöra Island, the architects wrapped the entire house, like a mummy, in a standard bitumen roofing membrane. “We opted for a solution in which you can see detailing and craftsmanship in the facade,” says Videgård. In the other, they covered the exterior with black-stained plywood planks.