The Twin Houses project, developed in collaboration between Anto Lloveras, Paula Lloveras and Studio Fredrik Lund, constitutes a rigorous exploration of domestic architecture as a negotiated response to topography, use, and ethical restraint. Conceived for a steep Norwegian hillside and commissioned by Olympic ski champion Stian Eckhoff, the project transforms a pragmatic brief—one house to inhabit, one to rent—into an architectural inquiry grounded in balance, duplication, and difference. Rather than imposing a singular object onto the landscape, the design articulates two interrelated volumes that step along the slope, allowing gravity and terrain to dictate form. The hillside is not neutralised but read, its inclination becoming a generative datum. In this sense, the project aligns with a tradition of critical Nordic architecture where landscape is not a backdrop but a structural agent, shaping section, circulation, and inhabitation. The twin condition is therefore not merely programmatic but conceptual: two architectures emerging from a shared logic, differentiated by use yet unified by an ethic of attentiveness.
Formally, the houses are defined by clarity and restraint. Timber volumes rest on a terraced plinth that negotiates the irregular ground with measured precision, producing a stepped base that anchors the buildings without erasure of the site’s rhythm. The sections reveal an architecture deeply invested in gravity: floors align with contour lines, roof planes register the slope, and vertical circulation becomes a calibrated descent rather than an abstract stair. This sectional intelligence recalls the alpine tradition of building with, rather than against, terrain, yet here it is reinterpreted through a contemporary minimalist vocabulary. Openings are carefully proportioned, balancing light, view, and privacy, particularly crucial given the dual condition of permanent dwelling and short-term rental. The houses mirror one another not as identical twins but as variations within a shared syntax, each maintaining autonomy while participating in a formal dialogue across the site. This calibrated repetition produces cohesion without monotony, difference without rupture.
At the level of inhabitation, the project articulates a quiet ethics of domestic life. The interior plans privilege continuity between living, dining, and landscape, extending domestic rituals outward through terraces that hover above the slope. These platforms function as mediating thresholds, neither fully interior nor exterior, reinforcing the project’s commitment to gradation rather than binary separation. Material choices—predominantly timber, untreated and honest—reinforce a tactile and temporal relationship with place, allowing weathering and use to inscribe time onto the architecture. The dual programme introduces a subtle social dimension: one house embodies permanence, the other transience, yet both are afforded equal architectural dignity. This refusal to hierarchise use reflects a broader socioplastic sensibility, in which architecture is understood as a framework for living rather than a fixed symbol of status. Even as the project remained unbuilt, its extensive models and drawings attest to a process driven by care, iteration, and contextual listening. Ultimately, the Twin Houses project stands as a precise and lucid example of architecture as adaptive intelligence. Its strength lies not in formal excess but in measured response: to slope, to programme, to collaboration. The involvement of Paula Lloveras and the broader team situates the project within a transdisciplinary field where architectural thinking intersects with artistic, epistemological, and social concerns. Like skiing itself—an art of balance, anticipation, and reading terrain—the project demonstrates that architectural quality emerges through attentiveness rather than assertion. The unbuilt status does not diminish its critical value; on the contrary, it underscores architecture as a process of negotiation, one that retains meaning even when materialisation is deferred. In this sense, the Twin Houses operate as a socioplastic artefact: a spatial proposition shaped by gravity, empathy, and the belief that building begins with listening (Lloveras, Lund & Lloveras, 2016).
Located in the dramatic Norwegian landscape, Twins on a Slope challenges the traditional footprint of domesticity. The two structures function as a "gravitational dialogue," negotiating their presence on a steep incline through a logic of balance and mutual support. This is "Architecture as Ethics," where the construction does not conquer the land but clings to it with a calculated, respectful tension. The twins represent a dualistic survival, a shared gesture of shelter against the atmospheric pressure of the north.
Lloveras, A., Lund, F. and Lloveras, P. (2016) Twin Houses, Norway. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2016/04/twin-houses-in-collaboration-with.html
