Jan Henrik Jansen with Marshall Blecher build prefab Villa Korup in Denmark

As far as private villa designs go, Villa Korup presents an obvious, charming aesthetic and an even impressive feat of design – the residence was built for a young family of six after a fire consumed their previous home – in just three days! Located on the Danish island of Fyn, the ‘three-legged’ solid villa is designed by Danish/ German architect Jan Henrik Jansen with Australian architect Marshall Blecher, both based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Villa Korup was prefabricated off-site using cross laminated timber, which enabled the architects to construct it in just three days on-site, reducing significantly the disturbance to surrounding landscape and the wildlife.

Villa Korup is a prefab home, clad in chocolate-coloured timber and resting atop flat, green landscape with lofty trees for company. The serene, lush woodland surrounding the villa gives it an almost cinematic feel, with its solid geometry, glass openings and subdued colour palette. The residential design branches off in three discreet wings, “developed in order to delineate the different aspects of the landscape, accentuating their qualities and creating three characteristic courtyard like spaces; a sunny south facing sloped area to the south, a protected kitchen garden to the east and an orchard cum playground to the west,” as mentioned by the firm in a press statement. One wing hosts the entrance and adjoining areas, the second is dedicated to the children, and the third is for the parents.

The innovative villa’s core and middle areas host communal gathering spaces for the family like the kitchen, dining and living area, while the ends anchor more private, secluded spaces such as bedrooms, offices and bathrooms. The interiors display a quaint space, rendered simply in light coloured wood, dotted sparsely with furniture and house plants, giving off a very airy, Scandinavian appeal. The almost bare furnishings and neutral colour shades make the space look bigger and more open, which is accentuated by the filtered daylight that penetrates inside through sliding glass doors.

Villa Korup sits as a low volume, and has been constructed entirely from Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), one of the first private residential architecture project in Denmark to do so. CLT has been exposed throughout the dwelling, and has been treated in a traditional Danish technique, with lye and soap that ensures the soft, resilient finish of the timber. “The house was raised in just three days after panels were carefully designed and robotically manufactured from sustainable FSC Baltic fir. Savings on labour meant that this solid timber house was constructed at a comparable cost to a more traditional timber frame house,” inform Jansen and Blecher.

The house is clad externally with raw weathering steel panels that were specially developed for the project, the outcome of which is a completely fixtureless façade. The cladding will react to its surroundings and patinate over time, turning from an “oily grey, metallic finish, gradually streaking orange, fading into a mottled brown, and settling eventually into a deep, earthy umber,” furthering the minimalist, cinematic aesthetic of the dwelling.   

Project Details

Name: Villa Korup
Location: Fyn, Denmark
Year of completion: 2020
Architect: Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter with Marshall Blecher