ARTISTS' RETREAT.

The restrained elegance of an artists' summer retreat and studio in Vejby, on the northern coast of Denmark, responds materially to its sylvan setting and invites both contemplation and quiet creativity.

Set down among ferns and newly planted birch trees, on the north Zealand coast, the building is a summer retreat for artists needing a break from routine or time and space in which to work. In addition to living quarters, the client -- who is a beneficent gallery owner -- asked for a 40[m.sup.2] studio which he thought could be part of, or separated from, the main house.

Taking the tranquil beauty of the setting as his cue, Henning Larsen has contrived a building of such poetic simplicity as must do much to encourage the more contemplative branches of creativity (it looks too perfect for the messier kinds). In essence, it is a rectangular shed that opens onto terraces on south and west through glass walls. Inside, a single volume spreads either side of a central service core providing a kitchen and bathroom, and a fireplace on east and west. By means of sliding doors, the space can be divided into a big north studio, and south-facing living room.

Structure is wooden, reinforced and given stability by steel frames and brick service core. Externally, the building's horizontality is emphasized and given texture by a covering of narrow larch slats and by louvres over glass doors on the west. The interior's simple high-ceilinged volumes, wood-floored and lined with birch ply panels, are full of gold luminance, the wooden planes striped by shadows cast by the slatted screens. Having spent some time working in the Middle East, Larsen is acquainted with its architectural traditions, and the upside-down clerestorey (the strip of windows lining the floor) in the north wall of the studio has a Middle Eastern cast. By this device, soft low light reflected off the floor is directed upwards. As the larch covering weathers down, the building will turn silvery grey, in harmony with indigenous birch and with the carpet of blue cornflowers which, in season, surround it.