Sölv House: what the mirror cost us
A two-millimetre reveal, held across thirty-four metres of facade, by the same hands that drew it. A post-mortem on the hardest tolerance we have set.
The idea was simple to say and brutal to build: a house that carries the forest on its skin, so completely that the reflections meet without a seam. Simple to say, because it is one sentence. Brutal to build, because a mirror shows every error at twice its size.
Where it nearly failed
Our first cladding trial set the panels to a five-millimetre reveal. In a matte material, invisible. In a mirror, a scar — the doubled trees jumped across the gap and broke. We tightened to two millimetres and rebuilt the sub-frame twice to hold it. On a barged, island site, in Danish weather, by hand.
A mirror shows every error at twice its size. The tolerance held because the people who drew it were the people who hung it.
It held because we were the contractor. There was no one to argue the tolerance down, no interface to lose the intent across. The reveal on Sölv House is the clearest argument we have ever built for why we refuse to hand our drawings to someone else.
Begin at the line.
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