The ultimate island hideaways

Views over water, nature on the doorstep, stepping away from the hustle and bustle. These are some of the delights of island living. “There is something inherently attractive about the protection of a border of sea. A sense of security that we feel deep in our bones,” says Copenhagen-based Australian architect Marshall Blecher. And it's this sensation that he and many designers of island hideaways aim to evoke.

For Brett Baba of Seattle's Graham Baba Architects, island living “merges notions of physical and psychological separation... the feeling of removing oneself from day-to-day experiences – a sense of retreat. It taps into romantic ideas about escape, about minimising the constructs of society and a return to nature, and of course the intimacy that comes from gathering with family and friends.”

Over in New York, architect Maria Berman of Berman Horn Studio sees the island as a metaphor: “The break from land becomes a break from work, cities, the 21st Century, the pandemic.” These architects have all designed homes for island settings: Baba on Mercer Island, which is surrounded by a freshwater lake just east of Seattle in the US; Blecher in collaboration with Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter on Fyn, a big island between mainland Denmark and Sjaeland (Zealand); and Berman on Vinalhaven, 15 miles off the coast of Maine, in the US.

Designers of island homes tend to use natural and locally-sourced materials to frame exquisite views, and favour a layout which is as much about outdoors as it is about indoors.

For materials, cedar is popular, like the cedar shingles that clad Berman's Little Peek house on Vinalhaven. Likewise, the exterior of Baba's Lakeside Residence on Mercer Island comprises bark-coloured vertical cedar, along with Corten steel panels “that have rusted to a beautiful natural finish, helping the volume of the house nestle into the lush landscape”, which was designed by Rich Haag.

On Bowen Island in Canada's British Columbia, Steve McFarlane of Office of McFarlane Biggar (OMB) has combined cedar, glass and stone with locally-sourced hemlock for ceilings and floors. He says that on the island, “over-scaled homes have become commonplace, dominating the context”. With its modest footprint “this cabin is an alternative to prevailing trends”.

Bornstein Lyckefors's Villa Granholmen on the Swedish island of Kallaxön is built entirely from untreated pine “like those just outside the house”, points out Andreas Lyckefors. And at Maguire & Devine's Bruny Island house in Tasmania, the timber cladding is bushfire resistant.

Island residents are generally in love with nature – OMB's cabin, for example, is on eight acres of temperate rain forest – and these retreats play on that, with windows that frame dreamy views.

At Little Peek in Vinalhaven, the windows are a statement in themselves: large and industrial in style. Maguire & Devine put translucent glass in the sliding doors of their cabin, to “reference the light qualities of Japanese rice paper screens, and provide privacy at night”, for their Taiwan-born client. This translucency also deters birds, like the endangered swift parrot, from flying into the glass. For Hale Nukumoi in Hawaii, Walker Warner Architects and interior designers Stone Interiors created windows to frame a view of the ocean and Lutsko Associates' landscape design. And on Bowen Island, “the windows are designed with minimal frames to strengthen the visual connection to the surrounding seascape,” says McFarlane.

The simple life

Designing for an island is all about celebrating the proximity to nature, even in the less remote spots. In Hawaii, Walker Warner Architects addressed that with big sliding doors and walls. Alongside access to nature goes the outdoor life and in many cases a back-to-basics lifestyle. Bornstein Lyckefors' Villa Granholmen cabin on Kallaxön is all about being outdoors, says Lyckefors. “The house serves more as a shelter. Most of the days are spent outside, cooking by the fire, eating by the sea, hanging in the forest, swimming, and bathing in the sauna.” This al fresco lifestyle is manifested in the building itself, which is painted a pale green, to complement the surrounding foliage.

This notion of enjoying the simple life is also designed into Maguire & Devine's Bruny Island cabin. Hugh Maguire describes it as “pared back to the bare essentials”, with virtually all the furniture built-in. What's more, the site is completely off-grid, so the house collects its own rainwater and is heated by a wood-fire oven.

Despite the austerity of such modest cabins, they still have an element of comfort built in. However, half a century ago, one island dweller took the idea of the simple life to the extreme. Finnish author and illustrator, Tove Jansson, most famous for her Moomin stories, used island life to practise a bare-bones existence that would make these modern-day cabins look positively extravagant.

“As she became more and more famous, she was constantly entertaining, and didn't have as much time to work,” explains Alison Williams, “so she moved to an island and built her own house”. Williams's attachment to islands was formed on childhood holidays on Achill Island off the west coast of Ireland, “as far west as you can go”. She is co-curator of The Woman Who Fell In Love With An Island. The exhibition at east London's Walthamstow Wetlands brings to life Jansson's island home and the inspiration she took from nature. “I loved that idea that she created that space for herself to work, and did it by hand,” Williams adds, describing the timber hut as “cosy and cute and Moominy”. Jansson and her partner, Finnish sculptor Tuulikki Pietilä (known as Tooti), lived on Klovharu for almost 30 years, until the early 1990s.

t may have been cosy inside, but there was no electricity or running water, and there would have been no getting away from storms. Like modern-day architects, “Jansson designed the house so that she could see the weather fronts coming in,” Williams adds.

Blecher has also made allowances for northern Europe's fierce weather. Villa Korup's three outdoor spaces between its three “wings” are “protected from the incessant winds on Fyn. The house provides a sturdy shell protecting the soft, wooden interior life”.

Jansson and Pietilä had to blast away a lot of rock to dig down, and created a sauna in the basement. Half a century later, even architects with modern construction methods to hand still have to make allowances for island settings.

McFarlane of OMB lists the challenges: “constructability, accessibility, availability of building services, and also any environmental ambitions throughout the design process.”