From wooden wall to wooden wall, floor to ceiling, door panels to window frames and everything else you could possibly imagine, all parts of this marvelous modern house that could be were constructed of solid wood. As overwhelming as this sounds, the repetitive use of this one material throughout the exterior and interior of this structure is surprisingly successful, mixing modernist design elements with a more comfortable and familiar material than, for example, steel or concrete

Designed by Peter Kostelov as a second home for its Russian residents, this house manages to blend clean modern forms, shapes and lines with a variegated material more often found in traditional log cabins and otherwise conventionally framed wooden retreats. The bottom story sits on the single and notable exception to the all-wood theme: a stone base that serves as a pedestal for the house and further emphasizes its solidity. Upper stories (reached, unsurprisingly, by a wooden staircase) afford framed views out on the adjacent river through modestly sized windows designed with wood slats for selective privacy and sunlight.

The various scales, shades, types and grain orientation of the wood used throughout the house and in various capacities helps break up what could be a visually monotonous experience. There is a visual hierarchy of wood elements, from small sets of slats to larger pieces of trim that tie them all together aesthetically.

The net effect of this unconventional completely-wooden home is a kind of context-free timelessness – one gets the sense that this curious riverside retreat home could have been built hundreds of years ago or just yesterday, with clean and unassuming crafted wood elements, accents and objects that defy simplistic categories of style.