OAD Builds a Latvian Coastal Residence on the Foundations of a Soviet Military Base

The Baltic coast of Latvia is not a place that invites casual construction. Its dune habitats rank among the most ecologically fragile landscapes in Europe, and any intrusion demands justification. OAD found that justification already embedded in the ground: the concrete foundations of Soviet-era military installations, remnants of a presence that once scarred this coastline. SAR Residence, completed in 2024, sits directly atop those footings, converting a liability into the premise for a 780 m² house that avoids new excavation altogether.

The decision to build on existing foundations is not just an environmental concession. It is the core design move. By locking the plan to a predetermined footprint, OAD accepted constraints that shaped everything: the separation of the house into two distinct rectangular volumes, their orientation among mature pine trees, and the relationship between interior space and the rolling dune grasses that press close on all sides. What emerges is a residence that feels less like it was placed on this site and more like it grew from an older, harder layer already there.

Two Volumes in the Pines

SAR Residence reads as a pair of elongated gabled forms rather than a single mass. Corrugated metal roofing wraps the pitched profiles, catching the flat grey light of the Latvian coast in a way that oscillates between industrial and vernacular. One volume sits slightly elevated, its glass walls suspended between pine trunks. The other stays lower, its grey panel cladding and thatched elements grounding it more firmly in the dune landscape. Together they avoid the monolithic presence that a single 780 m² structure would impose on a site this sensitive.

The gabled form is a deliberate echo of Baltic agricultural and fishing structures. OAD does not stylize this reference into anything precious. The corrugated surfaces are utilitarian; the proportions are long and lean. At twilight, when interior light glows through the timber-clad gable ends, the volumes resemble lanterns set among the trees.

Rooted in the Dune Landscape

From the beach, the house barely registers. Its terraced volumes hug the topography, with rooflines that track the slope of the dunes rather than overriding them. The recessed lower level disappears into the terrain, and from several vantage points the building is indistinguishable from the scrubby pine canopy behind it. Wind turbines visible on the horizon complete a picture of a coastline defined by exposure: to weather, to energy infrastructure, and to the slow ecological processes that formed these dunes over millennia.

A cantilevered concrete roof shelters an exterior stair that threads through the coastal grasses, its raw surface honest about the Soviet-era foundations below. OAD treats the old military concrete not as something to conceal but as a material baseline, a reminder that this site has been built on before and that the current intervention is, in geological terms, just another layer.

Timber Ceilings and Framed Horizons

Inside, the pitched roof structure becomes the dominant spatial element. Diagonal timber-clad ceilings run the length of the living areas, their warm grain contrasting with the steel-grey exteriors. The open-plan kitchen and living space is anchored by a substantial island beneath suspended black pendant lights, but the real draw is always the view: full-width glazing pulls the dune horizon into the room.

The dining area offers what may be the house's most compelling moment. Seated at the table, you look past the vaulted ceiling directly to an infinity pool and the grey expanse of the Baltic beyond. At sunset the entire space turns amber, the timber amplifying the warm light. OAD understands that in a landscape this flat and open, the interior experience is fundamentally about framing distance.

Intimate Rooms and Precise Joinery

The private rooms demonstrate a shift in register. Bedrooms are lined in plywood panels with floating shelves tucked beneath the sloped timber ceiling, creating interiors that feel compact and warm without claustrophobia. A curved timber joinery detail at one corner reveals OAD's precision: the wood bends smoothly to meet floor-to-ceiling black-framed glazing, eliminating the hard edge where wall meets window.

Elsewhere, a large picture window isolates a single composition of prairie grasses beneath an overcast sky, turning the view into something closer to a painting than a panorama. The house toggles constantly between expansive and intimate, between the wide horizon and the close detail of grain and joint.

Thresholds Between Inside and Out

OAD invests heavily in the transitional spaces. A covered entry passage with a timber ceiling soffit frames the grassy dunes as you approach, staging the arrival as a passage from one world into another. Timber decks with sliding glass doors open to the hillside at dusk, collapsing the boundary between conditioned interior and windswept exterior. A pitched timber roof supported by exposed steel beams shelters a terrace that sits among the pines like an outdoor room.

These thresholds matter because the site demands them. The Baltic coast is not gentle. Wind, sand, and salt require a buffer, and OAD provides one through deep overhangs, covered passages, and layered enclosures that let residents negotiate the climate on their own terms. The house never pretends that its landscape is merely scenic. It acknowledges that living here requires mediation.

Night Presence

After dark, SAR Residence reveals its character most clearly. The timber-clad gable ends glow with interior warmth, their triangular forms rising from the black field like signal fires. Pine silhouettes frame these illuminated faces, and the house becomes legible as a pair of shelters rather than an architectural composition. There is something almost archetypal about the image: pitched roofs, warm light, dark forest. OAD earns this simplicity through the rigor of everything behind it.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan confirms what the elevations suggest: two rectangular volumes, roughly parallel, connected by an exterior bridge. Contoured landscape terracing wraps around both buildings, indicating that the grading follows the existing dune topography rather than imposing a new one. The aerial view reveals how tightly the clustered forms nest among the pines, with the grey coastal water stretching to the horizon beyond. The plan's clarity, two bars and a bridge, is the structural expression of the project's ecological premise. No new ground was broken that did not need to be.

Why This Project Matters

SAR Residence offers a model for building on landscapes where building should arguably not happen at all. By anchoring the project to existing Soviet-era foundations, OAD transforms a constraint into a generative strategy: the footprint is fixed, the dune ecology is preserved, and the architecture inherits a structural memory of prior occupation. It is a sophisticated argument that new construction can be an act of repair rather than disruption, provided the architect is willing to let the site dictate the terms.

Beyond its ecological stance, the house succeeds as domestic architecture. The interiors are warm, specific, and attentive to the way light and landscape enter a room. OAD never sacrifices livability for conceptual purity. The timber ceilings, the framed views, the sheltered terraces: these are spaces designed for daily life in a harsh climate, not for photographs alone. That balance between idea and inhabitation is what gives SAR Residence its weight.

SAR Residence by OAD. Saraiķi, Latvia. 780 m². Completed 2024. Photography by Alvis Rozenbergs.

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