It looks like my parents might have bought a new house.
For a long time they’ve been looking for a new house; somewhere newer, with fewer maintenance needs than the house they bought when my mother was pregnant with me. And the garden I grew up in.
Their old house is a 1940′s house with a large garden – twice the size of the new garden and sloping, whereas the new garden is flat; a piece of virgin land.
I love the fact that they’re leaving the old house while they still have the chance to make a new home for themselves in a place that is much more suited for their retirement. Less work, more time to just enjoy their home. And while the old garden is lovely and their neighbourhood is full of mature trees and lush gardens, their new home will have a stunning view over the Århus Bay and the ruins of the island fortress of Kalø Castle. (And it’s fairly close to my younger brother, his wife and their two kids, which is also a reason they chose to move so far outside town.)
And… I love the fact that they haven’t found some dull, down-scaled version of their present home, but something so very different and modern. I mean, just look at it; it’s unashamedly different and radical and special. And it’s a standard house. This house has been designed by one of the better architectural studios in the country (not perhaps the best; it’s not BIG, Schmidt Hammer and Lassen or Henning Larsen), 3xNielsen. It is a piece of architecture in its own right, but these houses are designed to be built on any plot of land and they have been, from one end of the country to the other. And they still manage to stand out, somehow.
I have no idea how my childhood home is going to be translated to fit into this sort of open floor plan, but I’m excited to see it. (And no, the walls aren’t sloping as the picture makes them seem; it is the cut of the window that gives them the crooked angles. And that’s my dad in the picture, looking somewhat out of place in the post-modern surroundings, but I am sure once the space is furnished with their things it will be softened and comfortable-looking.)
It will be exciting to see how they choose to do their garden. I can’t imagine that there won’t be a vegetable patch for my dad’s potatoes and my mother’s marigolds, and there are bound to be a few perennials and flowering shrubs as well. I can imagine the rooms, but not the garden. Still, I remember when both my sets of grandparents moved from their farms into small one-story houses; those houses retained exactly the qualities of the much larger homes my grandparents had in their farm houses, so I expect that my parents can transform this modern, sterile building into something warm and welcoming. Just like their present home.
So I guess my childhood home will remain, albeit in a different location.
I love the clean lines of the house and the virgin garden… Your parents are going to have so much fun creating a garden from scratch!
I’m really excited to see how they will transform this place into something homely, which is their style, rather than something cool and trendy as it kind of asks for. Their antiques and 1950′s furniture will look brilliant in that contrasting setting, I think.
And the garden will be rather minimal, I think. This is a home they intend to grow old in, so I have a feeling they will limit beds and borders to a minimum, but we shall see…
Will you bring us to visit again? To see the new garden grow.
I haven’t even visited myself; these are pictures my mum sent me… But yes, this garden will be my childhood garden – just transplanted to a different place and time – so I’m sure I will be sharing pictures of it when I see it.
What a wonderful opportunity to set down roots in virgin soil. I’m sure you will receive much enjoyment helping being a part of it.
Best,
Patrick
Sadly I won’t be part of it, at least not actively. My parents live across the country (which in Denmark means 3 1/2 hours away by train but is considered a long way), so I don’t see them very often.
Still, I am thrilled to see what will happen in their new garden.
This will be a new experience I am sure. I bet you have a great time helping them plan the new garden. The home is really piece of art.
It’s actually a fairly standard sort of house, but with one corner cut off and the windows visually distorting the shape of the building. I like it, though; it is a conventional design in many ways, but with twist and turns that make it seem much more avantgarde than it really is (and as a consequence it’s a very inhabitable floor plan, rather than a folly).
The 50s furniture will be perfect in that space. I hope they enjoy the open floor plan…we have a similar area in our home too. What light they will get too! And please share what they do with the garden, too.
I think the palisander wood of their 1950′s dining suite will look great against the white walls, as will the 1920′s mahogany sitting room suite.
From a complete outsider’s perspective, it says a lot that your parents would choose something so adventurous and different. They are clearly not “scaling down” their lives but moving on to a new phase with its own discoveries. I’m sorry, though, for the loss of your childhood garden–I hope their new one is as great a source of enjoyment in time.
I won’t be loosing a thing. When my grandparents moved, their new home and garden somehow embodied their old home and garden, and I feel confident that the same will go for my parents. It will be the same, bit in a different way.
And my parents aren’t adventurous; they wanted something low-maintenance for their retirement, with no stairs and a smaller garden. They did not go looking for edgy contemporary – on the contrary – but this house was the one that suited their needs. If anything, my parents are just plain practical.
What a wonderful house – so unlike the “standard” houses that are built in most countries. As someone has said above, it would great to see how your parents develop the garden; it sounds like a great combination of historical setting, modern architecture, virgin land and an adventurous couple!
Modern standard houses in Denmark are really a world apart from what they were just 10 years ago. 10 yeas ago the corner wouldn’t have been cut off and the windows would have been orthogonally arranged on the facades, which makes for a much more conventional look and feel.
But the view to the ruin… Ach, it is priceless, I think. That ruin, you see, was a place we’d often go on day trips to when I was a kid, and I always dreamt of living there one day; recreating the old keep and the curtain walls and have a home that was separated from the world by a tidal carriageway. My parents having a view of it will probably be as close as I get, especially as one just shouldn’t tamper with one of the grandest medieval ruins in the country.