Principles of home

When Henrik Larsen opens the back door of his home on the East Jutland peninsula in Denmark, in a hamlet 20 miles south of the city of Aarhus, he can walk straight through his garden to the sea. ‘The house is very basic, and right in the middle of nature,’ he says.

The start-up entrepreneur’s two sons, who are 12 and 14, stay every other weekend to enjoy kayaking and surfboarding. ‘This area is unchanged since the 1960s,’ says Henrik. ‘There are no shops, no restaurants, no temptations. Yet it’s close to my home in the city. I stay at the house at least one night a week, and at weekends.’

At its heart is an open-plan living space with a kitchen and dining area. It’s cosy when Henrik visits alone, or with his girlfriend, but spacious enough for a crowd. ‘The kitchen is really good,’ he says. ‘At Christmas, 12 of us had duck and turkey with roast potatoes. Then we gathered around the fireplace – it’s so warm and welcoming.’ As is the Danish way, Henrik, 43, hired a property agent to find him a seaside retreat. ‘I’d been looking for quite some years,’ he says. ‘It was important for me. I either wanted a good view or proximity to the sea, and I got both. When I wake up, if there isn’t a thunderstorm, I go straight into the water.’ Each of the four bedrooms has its own door leading outside, so the early risers can take a dip in the sea without having to disturb anyone else in the house.

Henrik loves spending time in the outdoor sauna. ‘It’s the Viking thing,’ he says. ‘When friends come over, we go for a run – the house is surrounded by forest – swim, then enjoy a cold beer in the sauna.’

After buying the property Henrik tried to live in the 60-year-old aerated concrete house on the plot. ‘It was very damp, I had to throw out all my clothes as they were smelly,’ he says.

So having worked with architect Kim Pretzmann Olesen on his early 1900s townhouse in the city, Henrik asked him to draw up renovation plans. ‘But I got a call from him every other day telling me that it was going to cost twice as much as we originally thought,’ he explains. ‘So we decided, reluctantly, to demolish the house and build again, in timber, because it would sit so beautifully among the natural surroundings.’

Kim took a biogenic approach to the design and build, mainly using materials produced by living organisms. Almost everything is timber except for