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Cultivating a way of living that’s equally comfortable inside and out is an aspiration with as many inflections as there are cultures. A house in Kailua, Hawaii, by Mork-Ulnes Architects draws on both Modernist and Indigenous traditions, effecting a melding of building types developed in contrasting climates. From San Francisco, the architects—where they met their clients—picked up the dream of California living, epitomized by the famous Case Study houses throughout the state. Two thousand miles west, where Kailua House is located on the island of Oahu, the architects found a local veranda type called the lanai. And, heading back 7,000 miles east (and a little north), to Mork-Ulnes’s home base in Oslo, they brought in the functional efficiency and warm introversion of Norwegian wilderness cabins.

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Vines can cling to dowels (2) appended to the board-and-batten siding (1). Photos © Joe Fletcher

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Surfboards leaning below a shower to wash off salt and sand attest to the draw of the island locale. Kailua House is situated a block from the beach in a dense suburb of Honolulu with a low-rise, 1950s ambience. But Hawaii’s largest city is separated from its suburb by a mountain range. Emerging from the tunnel connecting the two and looking back, one has the impression of entering a hidden cove surrounded by a verdant backdrop of mountains, says firm founder Casper Mork-Ulnes. The challenge for the architects was to create a similar sense of immersion on their site.

The architects’ big move was to employ a lanai—a veranda to protect from the elements and create a sense of enclosure. The indoor portion of the house is a compact two-story bar backed up nearly to the property line on one side. On the opposite side, the space opens to a patio and pool before stepping down to a carpet of green. It’s in this area that the lanai frames space, doing so in two directions. From above, the curve of the lanai springs from the house and swoops around the pool, creating a pocket of light surrounded by shadow—like the space at the end of a dark tunnel. Looking back from the yard, the lanai likewise produces a frame of shadow around a glowing expanse that continues inside the house, enhanced by a material palette centered on light-hued Douglas fir.

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A staircase (3) divides the living and dining spaces, which are immersed in lush greenery (4). Photos © Joe Fletcher

Every culture has its own version of the veranda, of course, and Mork-Ulnes jokes about the Norwegian inflection: “Everybody in Norway has a simple cabin, and, particularly with the seaside ones, you often have to go outside to move from room to room, using a covered walkway—a Norwegian lanai, you could say.” It was these cabins that brought the architects and clients together. After moving around when younger, Mork-Ulnes settled for a while in San Francisco and opened an office, which is still the firm’s largest. When a tech engineer at Google and a former exchange student to Norway came through the door looking to renovate a Victorian house in the city, affinities were immediately apparent. The couple had developed a habit of visiting the Norwegian countryside, where they admired cabin accommodations’ stripped-down interiors, bunk beds for sleeping, and pastel colors to reflect the sun’s precious rays.

A chance to work remotely brought the pair and their children to Hawaii, and they’re now set up to inhabit the patio. A third component of the Kailua House, besides the primary house enclosure and the lanai, is a series of volumes that hold up the roof, one containing a workspace, others a tearoom, a shower, and a kitchen. This set of functional blocks continues inside in the form of a library and a stairway. The rest of the wide-open living area is set against a backdrop of vegetation planted with species that tolerate salt spray. Above, compact rooms gather other domestic components, like bedrooms, a studio, and laundry, that make the whole house work.

The upstairs perch opens to a view of the ocean and across the lanai, which is planted with a green roof meant to grow in lushly, and the whole house is wrapped in board-and-batten siding with a crucial addition of vertical dowels that will, in time, allow vegetation to overtake it entirely. Once the green-stained walls are covered with vines, the family will find itself in a most unlikely scenario: a Norwegian cabin inside a tropical jungle.

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