Maybe it’s because these houses are reminiscent of the tradition of handmade houses here on the West Coast, but there’s something pleasingly familiar about the eccentric wooden buildings of Christiana, the surreal, semi-autonomous, rebel neighbourhood of Copenhagen. It would take too long to fully cover the strange history of  Christiania here, but you can click the link to read the Wikipedia entry if you’re not familiar with the story. In short, Christiania began in 1971 as an occupation of disused army barracks in the south of the city and has continued for over 30 years as a sort of utopian social experiment. Some interesting articles on Christiania’s present so-called demise are here and here and here. It’s the houses themselves I’m interested in. In British Columbia, this form of wild, freeform architecture is commonly called the handmade or hippie house, but we’ve also heard the term Westcoast Vernacular used to describe this style, and in California it’s sometimes called Big Sur Vernacular. You can actually find houses like these still nestled in parts of Vancouver, though they’re rare now in this town which is paralysed by Byzantine, creativity-destroying planning rules. But buildings like this are common throughout BC, especially on the south coast islands where the climate is mild. What is it that’s so attractive about these places? Maybe it’s that their use of wood and large expanses of glass feel correct in a cloudy environment where warm materials and natural light become imperative. It’s probably also that compared to the often stodgy transplanted architectural styles and decor that are much more common here (Victorian, Edwardian, fake Tudor, etc.), handbuilt houses represent boldness, freedom, innovation, creativity, freedom and pleasure. They’re closer to modern design, but it’s a much more freestyle, playful version of modern architecture, not the austere, almost protestant modernism we’re used to. These houses aren’t machines for living, as the modernists dictated; they’re theatrical stages and/or sanctuaries. They represent a kind of third modern design option, something that’s neither traditional nor modernist. For some of us in North America, seeing the European counterpart of our hippie houses feels peculiar because we often have the false assumption that this brand of hippie utopianism is a distinctly New World thing, but clearly we don’t own it.

Each glashus, or glasshouse, is made from salvaged wooden windows.

This fantastic riverside house has a sod roof; closer view below. This is more an expensive piece of classic modern architecture, and less a handmade hippie house.  Christiania has grown a little more gentrified, but on the other hand this is a great sustainable house, and probably warmer than the beautiful but chilly early Christiana houses in the Danish winter. As an article in the Independent pointed out, Christiania has to a large extent just traded flower power for solar power.

The house above is weirdly reminiscent of John Lautner’s Chemosphere house. Below, something slightly more traditional. Without a planning code, inventive building styles proliferate in a wildly mixed way.

This “banana” shaped house was built by a group of Germans who came as volunteers to erect bridges in the colony and were subsequently allowed to build their own place.

Thanks to photographers on Flickr for these excellent photos: Line Lyng, Christian Svanes Kolding, Dave Gorman and Henrik.

Tags: architectural design, architecture, big sur vernacular, British Columbia, cedar, Chemosphere, Christiania, Copenhagen, counterculture, Danish design, Denmark, design philosophy, glashus, glass, glasshouse, grass roof, handbuilt houses, handmade house, hippie, hippie house, island, Pacific Northwest, residential architecture, skylights, Vancouver, westcoast vernacular

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