Norm Architects designs Äng restaurant in Sweden
Sweden is not particularly known for its winery nor for its fine restaurants. Ästadsvingården, a 90-minute drive south of Gothenburg, is then a rare thing, a thriving, albeit small-scale vineyard with a culinary Michelin range, the Äng restaurant, on site. In Sweden, it also offers a spa with eight saunas with different temperatures. Ästad’s combination of food, wine and spa, and its bucolic environment in the Äkulla nature reserve’s hills, meadows, lakes and beech forests, has made it a serious attraction. The vineyard aims to develop that attractiveness and give it an architectural edge, and has just opened a striking new home for Äng, a smart greenhouse on several levels.
The new building is Daniel Carlsson’s vision and design, one of three siblings who run the vineyard. (Daniel established the vineyard on part of what had been his parents’ organic dairy farm as early as 2009. It specializes in sparkling white, currently only sold on site). Carlsson opened Äng, a more exclusive and experimental complement to an existing bistro, in the winery’s reception building in 2019. It offered a tasting menu created with local ingredients and local-ish seafood and took its Michelin star in 2021. An engaging mix of low-key, dry delivery and high ambition, Carlsson decided that Äng deserved a new environment that added cinematic views and thematic drive to the dining experience.
The pristine and sharply angled new greenhouse has at first glance space for only a bar, small kitchen and lounge. However, an internal elevator takes you down one level – deliberately slowly and increases the drama – to a cool, windowless wine cellar and lounge and to a large, bright dining room. The lower level, mainly built into a slight slope and located at a 30-degree angle to the level above, opens up for sweeping views of a pond and the hills and lakes outside but is cleverly hidden from view as you enter the vineyard with the road from the other side.
Without ruining the treat for future visitors, progress through the tasting menu’s approximately 17 dishes (depending on available ingredients, some of which are grown on the outdoor terrace), carefully paired with wines from the cellar, brings a carefully timed and choreographed mysterious tour through the greenhouse. Given the restaurant’s emphasis on sensory and experiential discoveries and great views, Carlsson wanted to create scenery interiors of quiet, restrained elegance. When picking out furniture that seemed to fit, he contacted the Japanese wooden furniture giant Karimoku regarding the dining chair N-DC01, designed by Copenhagen-based Norm Architects and part of Karimoku’s Case Studies series.
Japan’s largest wooden furniture manufacturer, Karimoku, launched Case Studies 2019, named after the cheap, high-concept modernist houses built in California that were built between the mid-1940s and 1960s as part of a program developed by Arts & Architecture magazine. and one of a number of market-exciting sub-brands. It was born of a collaboration between Norm Architects and Tokyo-based Studio Keiji Ashizawa. Fredrik Alexander Warner, partner and designer at Norm, had met Ashizawa at a workshop in Japan. The couple struck out, looking for opportunities to collaborate and began working on projects together in Japan and Europe.
“There were so many connections between what he did and what we did,” says Wagner, “we are an architectural practice with a design department, he is a designer with an architecture department.” In 2018, Ashizawa asked Norm to collaborate on the renovation of two apartments in Tokyo. “That’s how we like to work,” says Wagner, “to create designs for specific cases and specific needs.” Ashizawa worked with Karimoku on the manufacture of the furniture for the project when there was a common light bulb moment. “We just thought, there’s more to this than just tailor – made furniture, this could actually be the starting point for a sub-brand.”
Norm and Studio Keiji Ashizawa designed twelve pieces for the Kinuta apartments that became Case Study 01 and the designers, the basis for the Case Studies collection. The list of case study projects now includes another apartment in Tokyo, a branch of Blue Bottle Café in the city, a minimalist house in Sweden and a concept store in Copenhagen, with Norm as design manager and Ashizawa an almost constant partner.
For each project, Norm and Ashizawa mix existing parts from the collection of case studies, often adapting or expanding or reducing, and designing new parts where needed. The program has become a kind of conversation about similarities and differences in attitudes between Scandinavian and Japanese design and manufacturing. “Keiji’s approach is very much about strict, straight lines while we may be a little more organic,” says Wagner.
When the Karimoku team found out more about Carlsson’s plans for Meadow, they introduced him to Norm and Wagner. They quickly realized that they had the perfect candidate for Case Study 06. Norm worked with Carlsson on the entire interior of the greenhouse and worked out a palette of materials that worked with the expansive views. Stone floor is from Kronos and extends towards the patio and produces garden. It has also been used as countertops and interior cladding. In the large dining room, Dinesen planks have been used on the floors and to create a storey ceiling that rises in steps from the sommelier stations at the back to the floor-to-ceiling windows that extend the entire length of the room. Considering all that stone and glass, muted gray panel by Kvadrat has been used to keep the sound level to the level that Carlsson wants them. Lighting is from the Copenhagen company Anker & Co who also worked on Noma land 2.
Once again, existing parts of the Case Studies collection have been adapted for the restaurant. Norm’s N-CC01 club chair has been redesigned as a love chair in the wine cellar lounge, while Ashizawa’s A-S01 two-seater sofa and chair have been reduced and the N-ST02 table has been enlarged to become a dining table. Ashizawa has also designed a new small table and Norm a drink cart. The Case Studies collective is now finding out which of the adaptations and new designs will be included in the permanent collection.
Wagner has also added works, some commissioned especially for Äng, from Danish ceramicists Viki Weiland and Ulla Bang and woodworkers Løvfall and a wall sculpture from the designers Sara Martinsen. The new restaurant makes, according to Carlsson’s own recognition, other parts of the winery and spa look a bit tired. But he has ambitious plans to significantly increase wine production and renew and add new premises and housing, again working with Wagner and Norm Architects. Meadow may not be the last of the vineyard’s case studies. §