What kind of life do you want to live in your home?

This question lies at the core of Vivaret’s design and building philosophy. Designing a new home begins with your dreams, wishes, and lifestyle – specifically, how you want to live day-to-day and on special occasions in your home. When design and construction go hand in hand from the start, the end result is a home where you feel happy and at peace. Vivaret seamlessly combines architectural design and craftsmanship under one roof, which means a less stressful project for you and a better outcome.

In this blog, we walk through Vivaret’s four-phase Design & Build process, using the Usva house completed in 11 months as an example. Usva is a wooden home built from countless dreams, which was raised on the family’s own forest plot in Eastern Finland under Vivaret’s guidance.

Next, we explain how the project’s phases progressed in a user-oriented and precise way. We’ll show how careful planning and skilled construction ultimately lead to a happy everyday life in a new home.

1. Vision

It all begins with the vision. In the first phase, we focus on your dream. Led by Kivi Sotamaa, the Vivaret team aims to understand the life you envision in your new home - the memories, everyday moments, and celebrations you imagine within it. We review your wishes and needs: how big a home you require, what functions you want (for example, space for hobbies or gym or remote work), and what kind of atmosphere feels right for you. At the same time, we get to know the building site.

In the case of the Usva house, this meant walking through the family’s own spruce forest next to a meadow where the house would be built. The plot’s natural features, orientation, and terrain provide important input for the vision - do you want to wake up to the morning sun in your bedroom, or admire the last rays of the evening sun through your living room’s large windows?

During the vision phase, we also set the project’s framework. Once the dreams are put into words, together we establish a clear direction for the project: what is expected from the house, roughly how much the construction can cost, and how quickly you want your home finished. Vivaret’s experts handle the background work so that you can focus on what’s essential. We take care of checking building regulations, the zoning status, and even the soil conditions - ensuring there are no unpleasant surprises later on. The Vivaret team works closely together from the start to ensure that vision and practicalities meet. The end result is a clear plan toward your dream home.

The story of the Usva House: The timber for the Usva house was sourced from the owner family’s own spruce forest, giving the project a special significance. The sturdy trees from the old forest were carefully felled and sawn into the building materials for the house, so a piece of the family’s history was quite literally built into the home. Traditional wood joinery was used in the structure without any visible metal parts - age-old woodworking skill gave the house both durability and beauty.

The majority of the house was prefabricated in Vivaret’s workshop: the wall and roof modules were fully completed - even down to the interior surfaces - which significantly shortened the actual construction time and ensured uncompromising quality in every detail. The wood was left boldly exposed inside the house as well, bringing natural warmth and the scent of wood into the home.

2. Architectural Design & Visualization

Once the vision and direction are clear, we move on to the architectural design and visualization phase. Now your dream takes concrete form in drawings and 3D models. Led by Vivaret’s chief designer, the design team gets to work sketching floor plans and facades that reflect your wishes and the unique characteristics of the site. The design combines Nordic boldness with cozy warmth: the goal is a timeless wooden house that both pleases the eye and feels like home from the very first day. You remain closely involved in this stage, exactly as much as you want to be.

Visualization means you get to see your future home as realistically as possible in advance. Vivaret makes use of modern tools: 3D modeling, renderings, and VR/AR technology. If you wish, you can take a virtual tour of your home’s spaces with Apple Vision Pro glasses, allowing you to sense the rooms’ proportions and ambiance beforehand. How does the morning light fall into the living room? What view opens up from the bedroom window? How do the house’s spaces flow together? You’ll get answers to these questions already during the design stage. At the same time, you can explore material options: what does a natural wood ceiling look like, or what kind of mood does a dark, oil-treated exterior cladding create?

During the Usva house’s design phase, the family was able to see their home both virtually and through a scale model – this helped them choose, for instance, a refined light wood tone for the interior walls to keep the home bright during the dark northern winter. 

By the end of the design phase, you’ll have a detailed architectural plan and a visualization of a home that feels like yours. In addition, Vivaret’s chief designer takes care of the official permit drawings and especially the technical plans - these documents ensure everything is ready for construction.

The design and visualization phase is rewarding: your dream is no longer just in your imagination, but on paper and in pixels, ready to come to life.

3. Prefabrication

In the third phase, the focus shifts to the workshop hall and carpentry shop. During the prefabrication phase, Vivaret’s experienced carpenters and engineers truly begin building your house - first virtually and then physically. This phase is led by our founder, Jonathan Carle. All plans are reviewed down to the finest detail: we ensure that the structures, electrical layouts, and HVAC systems all fit together without conflicts. After that, the components of your house are largely manufactured to completion in our workshop. We use domestic solid wood (such as slow-grown Finnish spruce), which is machined into millimeter-precise CLT panels, columns, and beams. Traditional craftsmanship meets modern technology: our carpenters pre-fit critical joints in 3D models countless times in advance, as if assembling the house over and over in the workshop. This precision - rooted in centuries of timber-building tradition, in expert carpentry and artful wood joinery - guarantees that the parts fit together flawlessly.

During prefabrication, your house comes to life sheltered from the weather, even as the foundations are being prepared on site. In the Usva house, prefabrication was used extensively: the wall elements were built in the workshop, the roof structures were assembled and pre-fitted, and even the windows (with their frames) were installed into the elements at the factory. CLT is naturally an insulating building material, so in this project there was no need to install separate wall insulation. Once each element has been test-fitted, they are numbered and transported by truck to the site.

4. Construction

In the fourth phase, it’s time to erect the house and prepare for moving in. The construction stage proceeds like a well-rehearsed choreography, thanks to thorough prefabrication. With the foundations ready and waiting, the building’s elements arrive on site precisely at the right time. A heavy crane lifts the wall elements into place one by one - they fit together like puzzle pieces, since each connection point was tested in advance.

Soon the shape of the house stands on the plot: the walls, floor structures, and roof form a shelter from the elements in a matter of weeks, not months. The frame of the Usva house was raised in late summer in just a few days, and the family saw their dream literally rising in their own yard. This approach ensures the house is under cover quickly, allowing the team to continue working on the details.

During construction, Vivaret’s project manager keeps you up to date. You can peacefully follow the work’s progress, knowing that someone is taking care of the big picture and communications on your behalf. Meanwhile, our team finishes the house’s details on site: they ensure, for example, that the tones of the wood surfaces are exactly as you wanted; they carefully install all fixed furnishings, appliances, and light fixtures in place; and they make sure the technical systems (such as heating, water, ventilation, and smart home systems) are running optimally. 

Everything is done meticulously yet efficiently - in most cases the move-in ready home is prepared for handover within 3–6 months from the start of assembly.

Finally, the long-awaited moment arrives: moving into the new home. For the Usva house, this moment came 11 months after the start of the project – that is, 11 months from when the family first met Vivaret’s architect, Kivi Sotamaa. The family stepped into their finished home, took a deep breath of the wood’s scent, and felt the peace and joy around them that crowned all the careful work.

The Vivaret team hands over the keys, proud of their work - and the collaboration doesn’t end there. We continue to support you even after move-in: we answer your questions and ensure that your home functions perfectly, for example as the seasons change.

To us, a house is a living entity, whose needs evolve as your life changes. We at Vivaret strongly believe in adaptability, which means the homes we build adjust to changes easily and cost-effectively. Because we carefully save all the plans, implementing new ideas goes smoothly even years later. For example, when the residents of the Usva house experienced changes in their life circumstances, they made several new requests - which we then implemented smoothly and to a high standard.

Your home is meant to serve you for decades - even centuries - to come.

Contact Us – Vivaret

Contact us at jonathan@vivaret.fi, and let’s start the discussion about your dream home.

We speak English, French, Italian and of course Finnish.