Forest Villages

“We seek out
the light of the glades
and live partly in cities
where we imagine
that we are ourselves.
Yet we are what we are
a spruce forest people”

Harry Martinson, Tuvor, 1973

This project described as “Forest Villages” swims against the tide by proposing the preservation of the forest in symbiosis with human development through a careful planning strategy. We want to create an alternative urban development: one that preserves the spirit of the place and keeps the forest a forest, forever.

We must enable people to live, gently and respectfully, deep among nature by creating sustainable developments that are part of the natural world. Developments that offer radical respect to their surroundings, that collaborate with natural ecosystems as neighbours, to draw people back to their roots as a component of a networked planet. We want to create healing places, that restore human souls and protect the environment. 

Our plan is to work with the forest in a similar way as we develop our projects. Symbiotically. Networked. Helpful. Unseen. 

Our forest houses strive for invisibility. We step lightly on the ground and let the forest that surrounds us be. Our architecture is respectful, it does not want to show off, it wants to blend in. Hidden in the forest, among the trees, blueberry bushes and ferns, without fences and with few roads, the wooden buildings of our New Kalvandö concept are almost impossible to discern from the forest around them. It enables its residents to become the forest people of the 21st century.