"Villa Ultimate" gets a lift

We always say that our home lifts are about more than creating the best accessibility in a home. A beautiful home lift is a design feature that enhances the value of the home – and can even help make life more worthwhile. We can see that play out in a four-story villa in Sollentuna, a town just outside Stockholm.

There, one of Sweden’s best-known home architects, Pål Ross, integrated an Aritco home lift into the design of a dream house that the client calls “Villa Ultimate.” Pål is known for homes with curved shapes, high-end materials and lots of glass. He believes in the value of lifts so much that he includes a place for a lift in all of his villas, even if the client doesn’t want to put one in right away.

“In our design process, my overall intention is to create a living environment that makes like more worthwhile,” Pål says. “It’s also that the customer should be happy for the rest of his life in that environment,” he says. “So I take into consideration the day when they may not be able to run up and down those beautiful stairs anymore. And long before that, they may have parents who would like to visit and enjoy the view from the roof terrace.”

High-quality materials are also crucial in building houses that last. Pål is a big believer in using concrete, noting that concrete gets stronger for the first 100 years in place, offers superior sound insulation and only costs about 15% more than wood construction. “It’s also the windows the doors, the kitchens, the tiling, the lighting,” he says. “We don’t pick the most expensive things, because there’s always something more expensive, but we always pick really, really good quality.”

Pål, who has worked with Aritco for 15 years, says that quality is one factor in his choice of lift, “We like the product, service and pricing solution.”

Aritco’s focus on design that fits in with the architect’s vision, as well as a shared a view of what an elevator should do in a house, are also pluses. For example, a lift has to have a beautiful enough design not to interfere with the building’s flow. “I have a philosophy about the movements in the building and how to create a sense of wellbeing in the flows that occur when you move around it. That that has to do with where walls are, where windows are, what you see when you come into a room, what comes first what comes second, and so on.”

He says his designs are also about reflecting the customers personality and how they wish to live their lives. In this case, the owner is a film buff, so one of the rooms on the basement/garage level is a cinema, which is accessed by an Aritco elevator that goes from the roof level through two floors and then down to the garage level.

“It’s not just a room that could be storage area if it wasn’t a cinema,” he says. “It has a luxury feeling, and it feels really cool to get to it.”

The bedrooms are one floor up, with the kitchen and living areas above. Besides the garage and cinema, the laundry room is also on the cellar level, so having a lift to take clean clothes upstairs is an improvement in daily quality of life. Same with the kitchen, which is two floors up, but it’s easy to take the groceries out of the car and upstairs in the lift.

“I love the way that the client calls the house Villa Ultimate, too,” Pål says. “He’s very pleased.”

With happy customers, it’s no surprise that Pål Ross’s firm is now branching out internationally, starting with projects in Spain and Portugal. “We are prepared to go anywhere for the right customer, and it’s nice when they find us out there,” he says.

More interviews with Pål Ross: