Few coastal sites in Northern Europe carry the weight of SAR’s foundations– four grass-covered Soviet-era military bunkers and the remnants of an occupation that reshaped both the Baltic landscape and its people. Rather than erase this history, Riga-based OAD founder and lead architect Zane Tetere-Sulce folds it into a working premise. The question at the heart of the project is not simply how to build on the Latvian coast, where creeping dune erosion, protected biotopes, and rising Baltic waters make construction increasingly fraught, but how to build with a charged site – one where architecture has, through time and overgrowth, become nearly indistinguishable from landscape.
Discovered as a cluster of timeworn military remnants, the site’s four bunkers are reimagined into a compound for a multi-generational family – one main residence and two guest houses – shifting their original defensive logic toward a contemporary domestic reading of shelter.
The two guest houses, their roofs sown with living grass, sink back into the dune habitat they occupy, extending the ecological logic of the site rather than interrupting it. Their forms draw loosely from the original bunkers, expanding habitats for local fauna while maintaining a low, almost recessive profile against the shifting sands. The main residence takes the opposite posture – bridging two bunker foundations and entering from below, it lifts its primary living floor above the sea horizon. Life begins on the second level, where the communal spaces hover just above the landscape, forming a deliberate tension between levitation and groundedness.
OAD continues by explaining, “Instead of focusing on the conflict aspect of a military site, the attention is redirected towards the bunker’s core purpose – to keep its inhabitants safe from the hostile outside environment. Our intention was to explore the themes of safety and security within a different context rather than try and rewrite the history.” Conceived as a “safe haven” for three generations, the project responds directly to the region’s harsh coastal conditions, where northern winds are strong enough to bend century-old pines.
In the guest houses, deep-set windows create a bunker-like atmosphere, reinforcing this language of protection. That same vocabulary carries into the main house, where the ground-floor structural supports offer a raw reference to Soviet military architecture, anchoring the elevated volume above.
The main house roof is the project’s most technically revealing element. Its pronounced dual-slope profile follows strict local regulations typical of this stretch of coastline, yet OAD amplifies the form through fiber-cement cladding – a contemporary reinterpretation that subtly nods to Soviet-era materiality. Faced with the challenge of suspending such a mass above a fully glazed facade, the studio developed a bespoke metal frame, intentionally left exposed as both structure and expression.
The overhang on the south face is carefully calibrated, with upward-sloping soffits that shield interiors from peak summer sun while drawing in the low-angle light that defines Baltic afternoons. The result is a roof that performs as both environmental mediator and psychological anchor – its weight counterbalancing the transparency below.
In Tetere-Sulce’s words, “The local architectural regulations mandated a dual-sloped roof – we chose to lean into this constraint. By amplifying roof proportions, we aimed to evoke a sense of grounded heaviness to psychologically deepen the sense of security. This heavy structure also acts as a counterbalance for the rather lightweight building. By elevating the glass structure above the ground, we created a tension where the protective weight of the top balances the openness below.”
Within the interior, the architectural language is restrained, almost ascetic. Concrete floors, wooden surfaces, and tactile finishes substitute texture for color, aligning with OAD’s broader approach of letting materiality carry atmosphere. A vaulted, wood-clad ceiling further emphasizes volume in the main living space, while the expansive glass facade dissolves any clear boundary between inside and out.
The planning follows the rhythms of the day: morning light floods the main living terrace and communal areas, while the master bedroom’s apertures are oriented west to capture long Baltic sunsets. Across the compound, the architecture resists over-domestication, allowing the century-old pines, the protected dune landscape, and the approaching sea to remain the dominant forces.
SAR ultimately reads less as an imposition on the land and more as a calibrated response to it – a project that, in Tetere-Sulce’s words, “does not conquer the land but lives lightly upon it,” reframing a site once defined by defense into one shaped by quiet resilience.
View more information on OAD’s website.
Photography by Alvis Rozenbergs.
