Hello Wood's CLT House shelters into a sloping site outside Budapest, where a timber structure and green roof make for a home at ease in nature.
There is a long tradition in central European vernacular building of making a house disappear into a hillside – burying the structure and allowing the landscape to reclaim what construction has displaced.
CLT House by Hello Wood is partially excavated into its site. A green roof continues the graded slope above, while below the building opens outward onto a 135-square-metre decked terrace that follows the curved edge of the pond it faces. “The core concept was to create a house that becomes part of the landscape,” the studio explains. The roof becomes a planted surface that from the road, reads as simply more hillside.
Structurally, the home runs two systems in combination. The enclosed rear volumes – two bedrooms, living, kitchen and dining – are built from cross-laminated timber (CLT), its panels left exposed in the bedrooms and corridors where the grain and layering remain fully visible. The central core is board-marked concrete, the formwork struck from offcut timber, giving the surface a texture that records the construction process in the finish.
Externally, the timber elements are treated with yakisugi – the Japanese charring technique – which aligns the cladding with the dark tones of the planted roof and the surrounding treeline. It also extends the timber’s service life and keeps maintenance low.
The green roof is a functional element; it moderates the thermal load on the CLT structure below, manages stormwater on the sloped site, and provides the acoustic and visual insulation that makes the semi-outdoor summer kitchen feel protected from the road above. The terrace, partially sheltered by the roof’s overhang, contains a lounge, dining area and daybed. Each of the interior rooms opens onto it through glazed sliding doors in timber frames, so the boundary between enclosed and open dissolves depending on the season.
CLT House is working hardest in the parts that are the least visible: the CLT structure embedded in the hillside, the roof that continues along the hillside, the charred finish that won’t need repainting. Blending inside and out with ease, the terrace and pond connect to nature, while the CLT bones create a cosy escape.
Photography by György Palkó.
