POKU
Architect: KTA Architects
Location: Maidla, Estonia
Type: Designer Hotel
Year: 2022
Photographs: Tõnu Tunnel
Those of you chasing unusual places to stay have a new trip to plan in 2023! Maidla Nature Resort is growing, and has added a third guest house to its lineup of unique villas, each for 1 to 2 guests. The latest addition is designed by KTA Architects, and is the largest one at the site yet – and it features something treasured by all Northerners, and irreplaceable in a cold climate: your own private sauna.
The following description is courtesy of the architects. The team of Maidla commissioned KTA Architects to design the third addition to Maidla Nature Resort’s guest houses last winter. What drew the team at Maidla to KTA was the team’s way of elegantly referring to Estonian building traditions – timber-driven – whilst creating entirely contemporary spaces with truly unique results. The architects were in turn inspired by Maidla’s nature as well as the challenge of designing the project in a way that would harm delicate local nature the least.
The end result is a small gem – a cluster of round-shaped rooms under a reed roof, offering comfort and privacy and a chance to relax and spend a day with a loved one or entirely alone, reconnecting with the nature around you. Placed a short walk away from the other Maidla villas and the historical hub where guests gather for breakfast, this house gives you all the tools to enjoy yourself even if you are not into nature walks. There’s a separate tea room in addition to the sauna and bathroom, a bedroom and a lounge area, with views of the surrounding nature. Fully insulated with triple-layered windows, as is per standard in the Nordics, you’ll be warm and cozy even at the height of winter.
The house was given the name ‘POKU’ – a literary reference which lovers of local children’s literature will immediately recognise, as ‘pokus’ are characters created by Edgar Valter, Estonian author. “Pokus” are also an Estonian name for the grassy tussock sedges which can be spotted everywhere around the Maidla grounds and elsewhere in the wetland areas in Estonia: you might know this long grass by its Latin name, carex stricta. The cottage, due to its reed roof, bears a resemblance to the tiny grass clods around it.
Designing POKU started with a question – what does a person need from a space, what shape should a space take for a person, for the user’s needs to be met, comfortably and with a touch of spatial luxury? If we consider space to be a protective cocoon around a person, what does that cocoon have to be like? And on the other hand: when speaking of a cottage on a resort, how can you still create a feeling in the place of accommodation that you are not squeezed onto the smallest possible and practical surface, where all functions are squeezed into one room? Wood as a building material was a natural choice, considering the client and the environment.
POKU consists of 7 different sized room cocoons or ‘pokus’, each of them designed for a separate activity: the 40 sq m cottage has a tea room, bedroom, sauna, hallway, living room, etc.
From the point of view of timber architecture, this house is an experimental laboratory. The concept started with a desire to erect the building on the edge of marshland as quickly and smoothly as possible – using all the technology advances available by the very advanced Estonian timber industry: design just a few factory-produced elements to create modules of individual rooms, from which a small building could be quickly set up on the rather delicate natural landscape. However, it turned out that forms with arc geometry are still not so easily achieved in timber factory production today; and the alternative pre-produced timber elements still remain unreasonable for a tiny unique object such as this cottage. Thus, the final form and technical solution of the house is a result of the architects’ vision and smooth cooperation with a skilled construction designer with excellent carpentry experience. Ribs cut from assembled plywood sheets with a CNC machine form the skeleton of the cocoons that make up the house: accurate and simple drawings made it easy to assemble the POKU on site, not unlike Lego instructions. The base of the building is a CLT plate that maps out the building’s clustered ground plan and rests on micropiles. The space between the plywood ribs is insulation foam modules, the surface of which is plastered; the reed roof stands in the air above the cocoon cluster that makes up the cottage.
Watch video of the project here
Project Details
- Architecture: Mihkel Tüür, Ott Kadarik, Aleksei Petrov
- Interior architect: Kadri Tamme
- Engineering: Laur Lõvi
- Builder: Otto Ehitab
- Client: Maidla Nature Resort
