Split View Mountain Lodge, Norway: Reiulf Ramstad's Timber House on a Slope

Split View Mountain Lodge is a timber holiday home on a snowy slope in Buskerud, southern Norway. Designed by the Oslo studio Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter and completed in 2013, it splits into branching wings so that each part of the house looks out on its own piece of the mountain landscape.

A lodge shaped by its slope

The project began as a direct commission in 2011. The client first imagined building on the flatter centre of the plot, but the architects proposed moving the house up the slope, where it could take in wider views. That decision shaped everything else.

The main wing, which holds most of the bedrooms, follows the line of the terrain. It then divides into two branches of living space, each stepping up or down to match the ground. From the shared family room the landscape appears in two directions at once: the "split view" that gives the lodge its name. A smaller, secluded alcove offers a quieter corner to retreat to.

Timber walls, timber roof

Wood covers every outer wall and the roof, so the separate volumes read as one sculpted building on the hillside. Inside, the same timber lines walls and ceilings, giving the rooms a warm, cabin-like continuity even as levels and directions change. Large glazed gables at the ends of the wings frame the snow outside like pictures, while smaller windows give closer, more intimate views.

The design won a German Design Award in the private residential architecture category.

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter

Reiulf Ramstad founded his Oslo practice in 1995. The studio is best known for the viewing platforms and visitor buildings of the Trollstigen National Tourist Route, the famous mountain road of hairpin bends in western Norway, completed in 2012. Trollstigen won ArchDaily's Building of the Year in 2009, the Norwegian Concrete Award in 2012 and the European Steel Construction Award in 2013.

Other works include Villa Holmenkollen in Oslo (2003), Knarvik Community Church (2014) and the Romsdal Folk Museum in Molde (2016), and the firm has twice been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award. Split View carries the same idea at a domestic scale: architecture that frames the Norwegian landscape.

Split View is a private home. For more mountain houses, see The Barn in Going am Wilden Kaiser: Timber, Concrete and Alpine Views and Piet Hein Eek’s Log-Clad Studio for Hans Liberg.

Related reading

• The Barn in Going am Wilden Kaiser: Timber, Concrete and Alpine Views
• Piet Hein Eek’s Log-Clad Studio for Hans Liberg
• ESCAPE’s Cabin-Like Park Model: Interior Layout and Small-Space Design
• Dick Clark’s Flintstones-Nicknamed Retreat: Curved Rooms and a Hilltop View
• Nido Cabin: Robin Falck’s Small Retreat and Its Large Window
• Ten Handmade-House Images and Four Projects Explained in Detail

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