A glass dome on a snowy Norwegian island sounds like the setting for a fairy tale. Inside this one, the details are delightfully domestic: a dining table, plants, timber balconies and a home built around a family's own ideas of comfort.
This is the Hjertefølger family's Nature House on Sandhornøya, north of the Arctic Circle. Benjamin and Ingrid Hjertefølger moved into the home in 2013. The photographs below revisit the project that brought their unusual approach to living in the north to a wider audience.
A house inside a greenhouse
Look closely at the exterior photographs and you can see two structures: the transparent outer dome and the separate house within it. The space between them gives plants, paths and living areas a sheltered setting while leaving the landscape in view.
The project description credits Benjamin Hjertefølger and Solardome. It records a dome measuring 15 metres across and 7.5 metres high, with 360 glass panels. The often-repeated claim that it was built in three weeks refers to the dome's on-site assembly, rather than construction of the entire family home. The inner building combines cob walls with straw-bale construction on another level. Read the project's construction description.
What the dome contributes to winter comfort
The outer enclosure creates a buffer against the weather. It does not make the inner house's walls, heating or ventilation unnecessary. The construction account also describes insulation, attention to airtightness and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. Those less photogenic details matter just as much as the beautiful glass shell.
It helps to separate two ideas that sometimes get bundled together under “solar.” Passive solar design uses sunlight entering a building to contribute warmth; photovoltaic panels generate electricity. Thermal mass, meanwhile, stores heat and releases it over time. Insulation slows heat loss. A sunny photograph cannot tell us how much energy a home uses across a whole winter. The US Department of Energy explains these passive-solar principles.
For another ingenious response to cold weather, our explanation of how an igloo retains warmth looks at a very different building material: snow.
The most inviting details are inside
The dining area makes a lovely counterpoint to the precise geometry outside. Rounded openings, textured walls and timber give the rooms a handmade character. In one view, the dome's triangular grid frames a balcony; in another, a long table brings the scene down to the scale of an ordinary shared meal.
The photographs also show how much the view changes the house. Trees create a dark edge to the glass. Water and distant mountains extend the apparent space beyond the room. The same dome can look open and airy by day, then become a small lantern in the evening landscape.
A garden with seasons, too
In Inhabitat's interview with the family, growing food forms an important part of life at Nature House. A greenhouse can make a demanding climate more hospitable to plants, but the list of crops grown there should not be read as a promise that every fruit is harvested year-round. Daylight and the choice of crop still matter.
There is plenty to enjoy here without turning the house into a claim of effortless self-sufficiency. It offers a memorable question for any home: could the transition between indoors and outdoors become a place to spend time, rather than simply a doorway to pass through?
The night photographs add one final treat. If the northern sky is what catches your eye, explore our guide to northern lights destinations, including the practical differences between planning a trip to Norway, Sweden and other aurora regions.
Two enclosures with different jobs
The domestic building and its surrounding dome should be read as two related spaces. The cob house contains the rooms where the family lives; the larger transparent enclosure also shelters a zone around it. In the photographs, that intermediate area is as important as the exterior silhouette, because it shows how planting and household life fit between the home and the outer shell.
“Solar” does not automatically mean that the glass structure generates electricity. Admitting sunlight, sheltering a garden and producing electrical power are different functions. Likewise, a protected growing area is not proof that every crop listed in a feature is harvested throughout the dark winter. The family’s experience is most informative when the building’s features are distinguished from broad claims of complete self-sufficiency.
The dining table, balcony and plants make the Nature House feel like a home before it feels like an architectural experiment. Look at where the family’s rooms meet the space beneath the dome. An ordinary activity such as sitting down to eat acquires a different setting when the garden and weather are visible beyond an inner wall. Those details explain the project through daily life, alongside the memorable silhouette of the enclosure in snow.
The materials make the interior a different experience
The cob home is described as using an earth mixture including sand, clay and organic material, while the surrounding dome has a very different visual character. Curved interior surfaces and the transparent outer enclosure therefore contribute in different ways to the photographs. One creates the inhabited rooms; the other frames the weather and the garden around them. This distinction helps readers understand the project as a layered arrangement of materials and spaces, rather than a single transparent house exposed directly to the Arctic landscape.
Sources, photography and further reading
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