Re-thinking what off-grid architecture can be

Over the past few years, I have watched our clients change the way they think about their houses, and the way they think about luxury. Fewer of them are looking for something ostentatious, or for a home built around objects. What they ask for instead is quieter: spaces that work, a real connection to nature, a smaller environmental footprint, and less reliance on infrastructure and the grid. They are, in short, choosing to live differently.

Our Archipelago House in Finland is the clearest example of that choice. The site is a rural peninsula reached by a gravel track, with no water, electricity or sewage of any kind. One of the clients had spent her summers in the area, and her father had a house nearby. That connection to a particular place was the starting point, as it often is. It is rarely an abstract wish for a second home; it is the pull of somewhere already known and loved. We spent time with the clients on the site - and on the water, and out of those conversations the brief took shape. It asked for architecture in low-maintenance materials, sustainable and affordable to run, and a house that would become a family home and a legacy for the generations to follow.

The brief to create a family legacy shaped the design, as occupancy in a house like this is never constant. For much of the year it would it would only be the couple, while at other times it would fill with their children - in time their grandchildren - and friends. A single large house sized for the busiest week of the year would therefore sit half-empty for most of the others, and that was the problem we set out to solve by deconstructing it. Rather than one building, the house is a small group of them. A main house contain the living spaces, kitchen, technical rooms and one bedroom, and this is what is opened and used most of the time. A separate sleeping house has four further bedrooms and a small living space. A study building provides two work spaces that double as overflow accommodation. A sauna sits on a tiny island of its own, reached by a causeway, and a modest car port handles storage. The footprint is generous, and five buildings use more material than one, so by floor area the scheme looks inefficient. But a house should be judged by how it is lived in rather than how large it is, and for most of the year only the small house is in service. A small house is a sustainable one.

The house is designed to off-grid principles, though it does now have an electricity connection; mains power is a pragmatic backstop rather than the foundation of the design. The approach is straightforward. High levels of insulation come first, with triple-glazed windows, careful airtightness and heat recovery ventilation. Only a small residual heating need is left, and an air source heat pump covers it. The result is a house that holds its temperature quietly through a Finnish winter, comfortable without anyone having to manage it. Bathrooms are deliberately small, sized to encourage short showers, and more often the sauna takes care of washing. The toilets are high-efficiency incinerating units that need no grid connection at all.

The move towards this kind of independence is one we are seeing well beyond Finland. Energy prices are one obvious reason; reducing reliance on external systems has a clear practical value when those systems are volatile. But the appetite runs deeper than economics, and it shapes how we design. It calls for simplicity and clarity, for editing out whatever is superfluous. It favours a smaller house over a large one, and tried and tested materials that age well rather than finishes that date. It rewards passive design, solar gain captured in winter, roof overhangs and brise-soleil keeping the sun out in summer. And it brings legacy into the brief in a way that shapes real decisions. A house meant to pass down through a family justifies better, longer-lasting materials and more considered solutions, and it holds its value over time. That instinct is especially strong with second homes, which tend to be handed down more readily than a primary residence.

Global data suggests the off-grid market will double within a decade, and I think that appetite is rooted in something well beyond novelty. We live surrounded by digital noise. It is constant, and it quietly wears down our attention and our capacity simply to be present, with ourselves and with each other. That erosion is only accelerating as AI moves into everyday life. Disconnecting, in that context, is not a deprivation. It is sometimes exactly what we need in order to think, to rest, and to be human for a while.

Off-grid living is not only about stepping away from public utilities. It is also about designing a home that lets a family step away from everything else, and that can be a personal choice, particular to how each family wants to live. One of our clients, up before everyone else, treated his morning coffee as something close to sacred, and the house needed a quiet corner that belonged to it. For another, it was a dedicated table for puzzles and a carefully kept collection of books. Part of our work is to find those things out and to design the house around them.

Living differently, in the end, is not a single decision. It is a series of small ones: a smaller house, honest materials, a lighter footprint, and a home that asks less of the grid and less of your attention. The Archipelago House is one family's version of that. The shape it takes will be different for the next, but the instinct behind it, the wish to live well, and more simply, in a noisy modern world, is one we are hearing more and more.

View the project:

Archipelago House