Living in a place where it snows all winter long isn?t always all it’s chalked up to be. It’s easy for people living in warmer climates to romanticize white winters filled with shimmering landscapes, ice skating rinks, ski lodges, and hot chocolate. The unfortunate reality includes a lot more shoveling snow and shivering than those people would imagine, but that doesn?t mean that some type of balance can’t be achieved. Take, for instance, this highly unusual prefabricated home in Stockholm, Sweden. Conceived of by Street Monkey Architects, the roof of the “Pulkabacken House” (Swedish for “Sledding Hill”) doubles as a bunny slope.

Pulkabacken House is deceptively simple when viewed from the back. Constructed from concrete modules and black steel panels, the home mostly looks like a standard modernist unit and contrasts beautifully with both winter snow and summer vegetation. Walk around to the front of the house, however, and you?ll think you?ve accidentally wandered into a ski resort.
Built on a sloping site on Värmdö, an island in the center of the Stockholm archipelago, Pulkabacken House is warmed and protected by its neighboring hillside. The clients wanted their home to feel like a refuge, camouflaged and obstructed when viewed from the road despite its close proximity to other houses. In reality, the architects chose to angle the home’s roofline down toward the higher end of the hillside for privacy purposes just as m...