In Conversation

Sigurd Larsen: Archi­tecture Is More Than the Shell

Architect Sigurd Larsen sees himself as a designer of form – accordingly, his concepts often extend far beyond the mere building shell. Find out below what attracts him to hospitality projects and what strategies he has developed for various locations and requirements.

by Jan Hamer & Ulrich Stefan Knoll in March 2026

Hello to Berlin – it’s great you’ve found the time! You’ve designed an impres­sively broad range of accom­mo­dation in dif­ferent countries – what is the essence of your expe­rience so far when it comes to hos­pi­tality pro­jects?

I think we’re quite good at per­suading our clients that we should be building an expe­rience – and that this means doing things guests don’t neces­s­arily have at home.

For example: at the Treetop Hotel in Denmark, the shower is mounted on the façade in a metal box – so even in winter, at minus 10 degrees, it’s an outdoor shower. In other words, we make  guests shower outside. The Danes enjoy that anyway, and so far no one has com­plained. Our challenge was to work out how to prevent frost damage to the instal­lation.

Or another example: we position the bed in a bay window so that you can look out in every direction. The entire concept is ori­ented towards the visitors’ per­spective – not the heating system or the pla­cement of sockets. That comes later and is usually resolved fairly quickly.

So we focus on ques­tions such as: What would people like to see here? What don’t they have at home? What is already unique when you visit the website of a hotel or holiday house? After all, you first encounter images on a website, and those images have to make potential guests start dre­aming. Or, put dif­fer­ently: you have to be able to see yourself in a situation, in a house. And that is the situation we design and build. I find that incre­dibly exciting.

Does that mean, con­se­quently, that you develop each and every project entirely indi­vi­dually?

Abso­lutely, yes. That often results natu­rally from the geo­gra­phical location alone. Are we building in Bran­denburg, in the Spreewald, in a forest in Denmark, on rocks in Greece? Each location involves entirely dif­ferent building cul­tures and climate zones. Local know-how is also crucial: because expertise in stone con­s­truction is incre­dibly strong in Greece, we don’t build with timber there – unlike, for example, in Austria.

The only project that is a bit out of the ordinary is the Raus Cabins, which could theo­re­ti­cally be built in many other loca­tions. Have you made an agreement that this won’t happen, or how exactly does that work?

That’s right – it’s essen­tially a design without a spe­cific context, which is unusual for an architect. The cabins were initially con­ceived as some­thing that could be placed any­where, and yet you still have to con­sider what is uni­versal in a setting. For the Raus Cabins, the key cons­traint was trans­por­ta­bility. In other words, motorway regu­la­tions deter­mined how high and how wide they could be.

In case several cabins are placed on the same plot, we designed them with a front façade fea­turing windows and a rear façade without. This makes them easier to position in relation to one another, ensuring that each guest can still feel as though they are alone in the forest.

Are the hos­pi­tality pro­jects you’ve rea­lised also relevant in terms of acquiring new clients? Do they generate further enquiries?

They do. That’s the advantage of a public building – you reach a great number of people. As a result, there is a lot of exchange. For me per­so­nally, it’s also a dif­ferent situation com­pared to a single-family house project. With such com­mis­sions, too, I often remain in contact after­wards, but I no longer really see the house or its deve­lo­pment. With hotels, you are usually involved for the long term anyway.

This year alone I’m giving seven lec­tures on hos­pi­tality archi­tecture. It’s a field in which it’s very rewarding to work as an architect. The level of interest is high and the subject itself carries a positive con­no­tation. Audi­ences leave in a good mood – and I’ve only been talking about beau­tiful things.

Indeed, we know that very well! Could you explain how this very special concept with two over­sized inha­bi­table fur­niture at the Dort­mannhof came about?

I can still picture it clearly when I first stood inside the barn. Two hundred years old, land­marked, twelve metres high, with a central aisle and the former animal stalls to the left and right. Of course, all of that had to remain exactly as it was. Because the space was very dark, the idea was that the future rooms would have to reach upwards towards the light. We had managed to obtain per­mission to insert two windows on the far side of the roof slope. So ever­y­thing had to grow up towards them – like a sun­flower.

In order to achieve suf­fi­cient day­lighting, one of the inha­bi­table struc­tures had to be eleven metres high, the other seven metres. The rest of the design lan­guage more or less deve­loped on its own: in both cases, we only had a limited foot­print. In the case of the room with the grand piano, it was also important that our client, a clas­sical musician, would have enough space to teach local children or rehearse with his small ensemble.

This proved to be an excellent solution from a heritage con­ser­vation per­spective as well, and it was very well received by the aut­ho­rities: the inha­bi­table struc­tures can be com­pletely removed, the typology of the hall house remains tan­gible, and no his­to­rical ele­ments were removed or con­cealed. That’s also why you find details such as beams running right through a room.

Does the form of this house-within-a-house solution also influence the acou­stics?

It does indeed. If you avoid con­s­tructing par­allel walls, this usually has a very positive effect. The acou­stics are extremely good. We applied a similar prin­ciple at The Lake House in Berlin. The acou­stics there turned out so well that the Ber­liner Phil­har­monic rehe­arsed and gave con­certs in this space. And we achieved all that entirely without sound engi­neers.

We’re curious to hear how things are pro­gressing with one of your other recent pro­jects, the Cliff House, which you are curr­ently planning for VIPP on the Greek island of Kythnos. The holiday house will operate under a co-ownership model – have all future owners already been found?

VIPP is handling the search for co-owners them­selves. But it seems to be going very well – ten out of twelve owners have already been secured. To be honest, I hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. My assumption was that we’re curr­ently in a period when potential buyers tend to act cau­tiously. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

We would say the price is attractive.

At first, I wasn’t entirely sure either, as I had no prior expe­rience in that respect. But I com­pared it with the costs for our own holiday house on the same island. And one shouldn’t forget that the Cliff House accom­mo­dates not just two people but up to eight.

So, you’ll be able to start building soon?

VIPP actually began con­s­truction a year ago – the ske­leton is already in place, meaning the entire con­crete structure. Com­pletion is sche­duled for May 2027.

Is the co-ownership model likely to be con­tinued else­where?

Yes, abso­lutely. Given how positive the response has been, VIPP will cer­tainly want to con­tinue this model. There’s even the idea of con­verting my own holiday house on the island and incor­po­rating it into the new model. That would make sense for me as well, since I’m rarely able to spend more than a month a year there myself. What is not an option for me, however, is not having a house on Kythnos at all (smiles) – I just love being there.

How did you end up in Greece – and on this par­ti­cular island?

It was a slightly crazy idea, because I had only been to Greece once before, during my studies – so I had no par­ti­cular con­nection to this country. A few years ago, when we started looking for a plot for our own holiday house, we were initially inte­rested in Bran­denburg. That’s the case for many Ber­liners. But within our budget, we would only have been able to realise some­thing very modest there. At some point, we started thinking  about a sea view and Greece. So, on my second visit, I was already viewing plots. In order to be able to travel easily even in winter, I drew a radius around Athens and started sear­ching there. An island isn’t the most prac­tical in terms of journey, but our longing for the sea and open horizons was strong. And I was born on an island myself. I know – and love – that par­ti­cular feeling.

We chose Kythnos because the plot was simply excep­tional. Not in a prime location, but set in the middle of a small pen­insula with unob­s­tructed views in three direc­tions. Perfect for a house with a guest­house – at Piperi House you can reo­rient yourself from waking up to the sun­downer, and it never becomes boring.

A very beau­tiful house, we think. How far is it from the Cliff House?

Just up over the hill and down the other side – you can reach it in ten minutes.

What makes Kythnos special to you?

The island is kind of cool because there’s an everyday atmo­sphere to it. Many locals live there; there’s a sense of nor­mality, and it isn’t overly deve­loped for tourism. But don’t worry – espe­cially in summer, there are plenty of restau­rants.

How did the con­nection with Kaspar Egelund of VIPP come about – did you know each other before the project?

No, we didn’t. But he became aware that I had already built on the island. And of course, we’re both Danish – so we quickly got talking and got on well. Kaspar is a very dynamic person, and I’m not someone who enjoys end­lessly dis­cussing con­tin­gencies and worst-case sce­narios either; I prefer to look for pos­si­bi­lities. In that respect, too, we under­stand each other very well.

Was your holiday house the first project in which you also acted as your own client, or had you built some­thing for yourself before?

I’d only reno­vated our flat here in Kreuzberg – that’s it. Starting from scratch as we did with the holiday house, including fur­nishing the entire house, is some­thing else entirely.

Our home has evolved gra­dually since childhood – with things we’ve brought back from Denmark, Austria and else­where and inte­grated over time. There are also many of my own fur­niture designs, including pro­to­types. In short, there’s no over­ar­ching concept behind it; it has simply deve­loped over the decades.

So it’s quite exciting to plan and furnish a holiday house from scratch. The interior follows a coherent concept, which pro­bably makes it more aes­the­ti­cally con­sistent. You con­sider more carefully what is really important and what you actually need. Of course, you bring in your own taste and style – but in a dif­ferent way than at home.

Yes, that’s a classic challenge for many hosts: fur­nishing a house so that it’s “finished” and doesn’t grow orga­ni­cally over time.

In my view, the trick is not to see it as finished. You establish a basis that allows you to sleep, cook, host guests and so on.

I see this, for example, with the library in the holiday house, which con­tinues to grow and now requires more space than we ori­gi­nally planned. The same applies to art­works. And this is cer­tainly also true for the outdoor areas. This entire winter we extended the pergola and built new stone benches because we rea­lised that at certain times of day you want to sit in par­ti­cular spots. Since the plot is very large, we’ll pro­bably never be finished – and that’s a good thing.

How are you getting on with local craft­speople and the con­s­truction process? What has been your expe­rience of building in Greece, on a small island?

It’s dif­ferent, of course – if only because I arrived there as an out­sider with a dif­ferent cul­tural and lin­gu­istic back­ground. You have to become a bit streetwise. Some­times I simply step back and let our local engineer take the lead; I’ve been working with him since 2018. He helped me with the building permit, manages the sites and knows how to motivate the craft­speople.

Finding him was, in a way, a coin­ci­dence. When I bought the plot for my holiday house, I was spending quite some time in Athens. At a friend’s party I met someone who knew him and men­tioned that he was from the island and occa­sio­nally had con­s­truction pro­jects there. My expe­rience is that some­times you just have to show up some­where, tell everyone what you’re looking for – and things tend to fall into place quite quickly.

We’re curious to see how things con­tinue in Greece! How do you view the issue of bureau­cracy in building regu­la­tions in Germany?

There have been plenty of inter­views recently with archi­tects com­plaining about German legis­lation. This is because, over the past 170 years, a few para­graphs have been added after every “accident”. What nobody has done is tidy it up. My hope is that AI might one day create an overview that no human can accom­plish anymore. Then perhaps we’ll have building regu­la­tions that com­prise 80 pages instead of 1,600. That would be fan­tastic.

We’re somewhat scep­tical, though we would cer­tainly welcome it. Another topic: you’re both an architect and a designer – do those roles carry equal weight for you?

In that respect, I’m a typi­cally Danish architect. For gene­ra­tions, we’ve seen our­selves as desi­gners of form for ever­y­thing. It feels entirely natural to me that an architect designs ever­y­thing – from curtain rails and door handles to buil­dings, urban planning and garden design. Con­versely, it would feel unna­tural to stop and say: now all I do is the shell and the interior designer can take care of the rest. Accor­dingly, we exe­cuted pro­jects such as the Michel­berger Farm or The Lake House as Gesamt­kunst­werke – com­plete works of art.

Are you also com­mis­sioned directly as a designer?

That does happen, of course. For example, we designed shelving systems für New Ten­dency here in Berlin, or a kitchen for Reform.

In prin­ciple, I do that par­allel to the archi­tec­tural work. Since a building project takes up far more time, in reality I may only spend around five per cent of my time on design topics – but I enjoy it enorm­ously. And natu­rally, you see results much more quickly. It’s also amusing how often you meet people who own one of those pieces – how a design object mul­ti­plies itself thou­sands of times. I also very much enjoy working in much greater detail during the design process than is usually the case in archi­tecture. I find this obsession with details fasci­nating.

Is there some­thing you would par­ti­cu­larly like to design or plan that no one has yet approached you about?

I actually dream of planning multi-family housing on a larger scale. It would be exciting, for ins­tance, to realise 50 apart­ments at once, because then it’s not just the indi­vidual flat that is inte­resting, but also the rela­ti­onships between the units, the outdoor and com­munal spaces, and the cir­cu­lation areas. Since I have already planned quite a number of hotel and hos­pi­tality pro­jects, enquiries tend to come from that field.

Like Volker Staab, who often says in his lec­tures that people appar­ently only trust him to design museums and labo­ra­tories …

Yeah, sort of. Alt­hough I would be very happy to design a museum. But for that, I would pro­bably have to enter archi­tec­tural com­pe­ti­tions.

So you mainly work through direct com­mis­sions and do not par­ti­cipate in public tenders?

In my earlier posi­tions at Topotek 1, OMA, MVRDV and also at COBE, I was very fre­quently involved in com­pe­ti­tions. Perhaps I became somewhat dis­il­lu­sioned by this expe­rience. When I founded my own practice, I initially pre­ferred to work on a smaller scale. The advantage is that the pro­jects actually get built and that we remain involved right through to han­dover. I also find the direct exchange with clients at one table and the joint deve­lo­pment of con­cepts moti­vating in terms of our creative freedom.

You have also been tea­ching as a pro­fessor at Berlin Inter­na­tional Uni­versity for years – how do you balance tea­ching and office work?

After 12 years of tea­ching, I have curr­ently taken a three-year sab­ba­tical from my pro­fes­sorship. During that time, my practice has grown ste­adily, espe­cially recently – so not only has my role within the office changed, but my pre­sence has become even more necessary in order to stay focused.

Final question: what became of the model project Dachkiez, with which you addressed the acti­vation of flat roofs on pre­fa­bri­cated housing blocks in Berlin – has it been rea­lised in the meantime?

We sub­mitted the vision ten years ago for an ideas com­pe­tition and won. It has not yet been built, but we pre­sented it at the Venice Biennale, it con­tinues to cir­culate ste­adily in the press, and it is curr­ently being exhi­bited at the Dresden City Museum. So the idea – which is still looking for a client – lives on! If you know anyone, send them my way. I’m always happy to talk about the project.

We will. Thank you very much for the fasci­nating insights, Sigurd!

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Sigurd Larsen is founder of Sigurd Larsen Design & Archi­tecture, an award-winning practice based in Berlin. Since 2010, the studio has designed and built houses, hotels and public schools in Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Greece and New York.
Since 2016, Sigurd Larsen is Pro­fessor at Berlin Inter­na­tional Uni­versity of Applied Sci­ences, where he explores building design and visual com­mu­ni­cation through tea­ching and research.
Pre­viously, Sigurd Larsen worked at OMA Rem Koolhaas in New York, MVRDV in Rot­terdam, COBE in Copen­hagen and Berlin, and Topotek1 in Berlin.
He holds a Master’s degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Archi­tecture in Copen­hagen. He is also a member of the Asso­ciation of German Archi­tects (BDA) and the Berlin Chamber of Archi­tects.

Further houses by Sigurd Larsen at HOLIDAYARCHITECTURE

Interview: The con­ver­sation was con­ducted by Jan Hamer and Ulrich Stefan Knoll.

Photos: Sigurd Larsen © Noel Richter (Cover photo), Løvtag Bornholm © Nina Malling (1–5), Raus Cabins © Noel Richter (6–9), Dort­mannhof © Christian Flat­scher (10–15), The Lake House © Tobias König, Julian Kuhnke & Michael Rom­stöck / KKROM Ser­vices (16–19), Visua­li­sa­tions Cliff House © Sigurd Larsen Design & Archi­tecture (20–24), Piperi House © Tobias König, Julian Kuhnke & Michael Rom­stöck / KKROM Ser­vices (25–32), Michel­berger Farm © Tobias König / KKROM Ser­vices (33–36), Click Shelves © New Ten­dency (37/38), Kitchen for Reform © Reform Fur­niture UG (39/40), Dachkiez © Sigurd Larsen Design & Archi­tecture (41–43)