In a world of starchitects competing to design ever taller glass and steel megaliths, there are still some architects designing with natural materials at a human scale for comfort, longevity, and visual delight. Mette Lange is one such architect. These are beautiful, unpretentious homes in spectacular scenery that offer visual inspiration for homebuilders and dreamers alike.
Earth, Sky & Water presents fifteen houses designed by Lange across three chapters: "By the Water," "In the Forest," and "In the Countryside." First-person project texts describe Lange’s unique practice of camping on-site at the start of each design process, and detail the thinking behind each house’s main features. Inviting photography takes readers inside these homes and draws particular attention to the choice of materials.
In keeping with her socially responsible ethos, Lange has also designed schools for the children of migrant workers in India, where she spends part of each year. These projects, presented in the book alongside her own home in India, inform her practice at home in Denmark.
Lange has kept her studio small in order to remain fully involved in each project at every level. As well as a visual feast of deceptively simple Scandinavian summerhouses that will leave the reader yearning for one of their own, the book offers a blueprint for aspiring architects on how to escape the rat race by running their own sustainable studio. Renowned architecture writer and fan of Lange’s work Kenneth Frampton contributes a foreword.
Contributors
Mette Lange
Author
Mette Lange is an architect based in Denmark who works in the distinguished tradition of Danish domestic architecture. She has more than twenty years' experience of running her own practice and builds houses that respond to a specific site and client, with sustainability and social responsibility at their core. This is her first book.
Kenneth Frampton
Foreword By
Kenneth Frampton was born in 1930 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. From 1972 to 2019 he served as Ware professor of architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2018, he was awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale. His publications include Studies in Tectonic Culture: the Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture; Labour, Work and Architecture: Collected Essays on Architecture and Design; American Masterworks: The Twentieth-Century House; Kengo Kuma: Complete Works; A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form; Modern Architecture: A Critical History; and Le Corbusier.
