Villa Andromeda, Royal Edition.
Live in a work of art – with extra everything Celebrating 20 years in business, Ross Architecture & Design has made a brand out of questioning everything. The firm is not only behind Villa Östersund, voted Sweden’s most beautiful villa in 2009, but also the first and only architecture firm in Sweden to be eco-certified by Svanen. Lo and behold, with Royal Edition, Ross Architecture & Design introduces award-winning, life-affirming homes with a majestic touch worthy of kings. By Linnea Dunne | Photos: Ross Architecture & Design
Pål Ross, founder and lead architect at the firm, has a thought-provoking metaphor for everything and plenty of opinions to boot. “People should be sent to prison for using materials that are bad for you!” he exclaims, riled up by the current status quo, where schools have to close down as teachers and pupils fall ill due to the use of allergy-inducing and otherwise health-threatening building materials. “Surely the starting point should always be to create healthy environments that don’t make people ill.” Refusing to draw square houses and insisting that architecture that feels good, flows well 20 | Issue 87 | April 2016
and looks beautiful can contribute to our overall happiness, he has certainly shaken things up during his two decades on the Swedish architecture scene.
Separating quality and price “I have a motto, which is that the cheapest way to build a house is to do it right the first time,” says the architect, “whereas in the construction industry in Sweden, the saying goes that it’ll be right the third time – it’s the third time lucky. There’s a temptation to save money during the planning stage, but then everything’s cemented by the drawings
and when you move in you have to take down the sink and mount it elsewhere because you didn’t think it through properly.” He pauses to let the message sink in, then reinforces it with another metaphor. “When you choose a life partner, it’s more important to choose right than to choose fast; lasting qualities like character and charisma are more important than, say, the weight of the person. Yet most people are completely obsessed with square metres – it’s like insisting on finding a 70-kilogramme wife.” Known for designing elegantly modern, award-winning homes, it is perhaps ironic that Ross is not more expensive – but that, he says, is the benefit of hiring a committed architect. “I separate quality and price. For me there’s no correlation between expensive and good, or cheap and bad; it doesn’t have to be that way,” he insists. “Half the cost of a construction project is in the materials, and half