artistic soul

Part of an artists’ colony dating from the 1950s, this Danish summer house was always going to have a creative spirit

- Camilla Tange and Juliet Benning

KITCHEN

Plenty of beautiful ceramics are on show. ‘It’s a shame to have them hidden away,’ says owner Milan. ‘And you use things more when they are in the fore.’

Ceiling and units, Kalø Køkkenet

home profile

THE DESIGNER

Kim Pretzmann Olesen, who founded Nordpil Arkitekter in 2020 alongside construction architect Bashar Nasouri. Kim also teaches at the Aarhus School of Architecture.

THE PROPERTY

A 1950s summer house in Denmark. It is entered through an 'orangery' glasshouse into the kitchen and mezzanine dining room. Off the kitchen is a bathroom, office and shed. A hall connects the guest bedroom and main bedroom. Below the mezzanine is a living room.

malerlandsbyen, the artists’ colony outside the Danish village of Veksø, was founded in the 1950s. The houses here each share the same DNA – huge panoramic windows that make the fecundity of nature part of each building’s identity – and the architecture itself seems to blend with the landscape. For the artists who have lived here over the last seven decades, light has been their most precious, lasting resource.