Overview
Steinhaus is a private apartment interior occupying the upper floor of a 1960s concrete residential building in central Oslo. The client — a structural engineer by training — wanted a home that felt like it understood structure: a space where every decision had a reason, and where the reasons were visible.
The name means simply stone house in German. It was chosen not because of any literal stonework, but because of the weight the interior was asked to carry — the weight of a life lived with precision.
Design
The existing apartment was stripped entirely. False ceilings, partition walls, and decades of accumulated finish were removed to reveal the raw concrete structure beneath. What was found was better than expected: a regular grid of exposed concrete columns and a flat slab ceiling of unusual quality. The decision was made immediately — this was the interior.
The new layout was organised around the revealed grid. The column positions became the logic of the plan: furniture is aligned to the structural rhythm, walls terminate at column faces, openings are centred between columns. The architecture of the 1960s and the interior of the 2020s share a single ordering system.
Materials
Concrete, dark oiled oak, and brushed steel. The floor is wide-plank oak laid in the direction of the primary view — toward the window wall and the city beyond. The kitchen is a single long run of brushed steel, flush to the wall, with no handles and no visible joints. The bathroom is entirely concrete, wet-room style, with a single slot drain that disappears into the floor.
Lighting is entirely architectural. A continuous linear strip runs the perimeter of the ceiling, set back from the wall to wash light downward across the concrete surface. There are no pendant lights, no table lamps. The room is lit like a building, not like a home. The effect is strange at first, and then completely natural.
Outcome
The project was completed in eight months. The client, who had lived in conventional interiors his entire life, describes the experience of coming home as feeling, for the first time, like arriving somewhere that was made for him specifically. That is the only review that matters.
Overview
Steinhaus is a private apartment interior occupying the upper floor of a 1960s concrete residential building in central Oslo. The client — a structural engineer by training — wanted a home that felt like it understood structure: a space where every decision had a reason, and where the reasons were visible.
The name means simply stone house in German. It was chosen not because of any literal stonework, but because of the weight the interior was asked to carry — the weight of a life lived with precision.
Design
The existing apartment was stripped entirely. False ceilings, partition walls, and decades of accumulated finish were removed to reveal the raw concrete structure beneath. What was found was better than expected: a regular grid of exposed concrete columns and a flat slab ceiling of unusual quality. The decision was made immediately — this was the interior.
The new layout was organised around the revealed grid. The column positions became the logic of the plan: furniture is aligned to the structural rhythm, walls terminate at column faces, openings are centred between columns. The architecture of the 1960s and the interior of the 2020s share a single ordering system.
Materials
Concrete, dark oiled oak, and brushed steel. The floor is wide-plank oak laid in the direction of the primary view — toward the window wall and the city beyond. The kitchen is a single long run of brushed steel, flush to the wall, with no handles and no visible joints. The bathroom is entirely concrete, wet-room style, with a single slot drain that disappears into the floor.
Lighting is entirely architectural. A continuous linear strip runs the perimeter of the ceiling, set back from the wall to wash light downward across the concrete surface. There are no pendant lights, no table lamps. The room is lit like a building, not like a home. The effect is strange at first, and then completely natural.
Outcome
The project was completed in eight months. The client, who had lived in conventional interiors his entire life, describes the experience of coming home as feeling, for the first time, like arriving somewhere that was made for him specifically. That is the only review that matters.
type
Interior
Location
Oslo, NO
Year
2025