Architect Johan Sundberg has borrowed elements from traditional Japanese houses to create Sommarhus T, a holiday home on Sweden's south coast.

Located in a pine forest in Ljunghusen, the house provides a modest summer retreat for a family of four.

A key aspect of the brief was to provide a strong connection with the setting. Sundberg achieved this by designing a single-storey dwelling with a T-shaped floor plan, giving every direct room access to a generously sized wooden deck that encircles the building.

Evoking the engawa of a traditional Japanese house, this veranda is sheltered by the pronounced eaves of a large black roof, meaning the family can make use of its all year round, not just in the dry summer months.

"Northern European modernism has always had this interplay with Japanese or east Asian architecture," Sundberg told Dezeen.

"We wanted to see if we could take this typology and mix it with our ideas of the Swedish and Danish postwar summer dwelling."

To help the house blend in with its surroundings, Sommarhus T's walls and veranda are finished in a silvering Siberian larch – a favoured material of Sundberg's, also used in his gabled holiday home set in a pine forest in Österlen.

To contrast, the underside of the roof is painted dark to emphasise the shadows.

With the surrounding trees offering a suitable amount of privacy, the architect was able to add large sliding glass doors all around the building.

Other key details include rain chains, known as kusari-doi, which hang down from the overhanging eave. Frequently found in Japanese architecture, these form decorative alternatives to downpipes and double as water features.

Inside, the building is divided into three volumes that combine to form the T-shaped floor plan.

According to Sundberg, the idea was to a variety of spaces and moods so that "different generations can hang out in and around the house at the same time without bothering one another too much".

On the east side of the house are living spaces and the children's bedrooms, while the west side hosts the master bedroom and an outdoor dining area.

The children's bedrooms are designed to be spacious, with en-suite bedrooms, to ensure they will still be suitable for use when they have grown up.

Spruce floors feature in every room, along with white ceilings, delicate curtains and bulbous hanging lights, forming a backdrop to an array of furniture.

Designed by Sundberg, all the fixed furniture is made from oak, while the more colourful, moveable chairs and tables were designed by a local decorator working directly for the client.

Swedish architect Sundberg founded his studio, Johan Sundberg Arkitektur, in 2006. Other projects by the studio include a wooden summerhouse raised off the forest floor and and another house clad in Siberian larch with an adjoining wrap-around terrace.

Photography is by Markus Linderoth.

Project credits:

Chief architect: Johan Sundberg
Lead architect: Itziar del Río Gómiz
Associate architect: Henrik Ålund
Structural engineer: Gustav Svensson
Contractor: Niklas Samberg
Builders: Niklas Samberg, Magnus Olofsson