Find Tranquility at Project Ö, a Private Utopia on a Finnish Archipelago

Jan 11, 2024

By Toby Skinner

On a small tree-covered hunk of granite and gneiss—one of more than 40,000 islands in the Finnish archipelago—this is how life goes. We wake with the light and the steady whoosh of wind over the Baltic Sea, where the Gulf of Finland meets the Gulf of Bothnia. After blinking into the fresh air, my first job is to light the sauna, maybe with a few droplets of scented oil. Then I scramble local farm eggs and tomatoes to serve with homemade yarrow ricotta and fragrant foraged herbs and flowers. As the fire slowly heats the sauna, the grasses outside sway and the water laps against our private jetty. Beyond that, other islets stretch towards the horizon, the stillness interrupted by occasional, distant sailing yachts. In the bedroom, the clock's sweeping hand seems to move slower, but time feels abstract anyway. My partner and I are alone here, feeling as if we’re in the early stages of a Terrence Malick film, when the spiders silently spin their webs and the pine trees rustle; before human impulses interrupt the order of things.

Project Ö is built seamlessly into the Finnish archipelago.

This is Project Ö, the personal passion of Aleksi Hautamäki, a spatial designer and co-founder of Helsinki creative agency Bond, who has built a private utopia with his partner, Milla Selkimäki. We first meet at the little harbor at Kasnäs, a village of scattered red houses two-and a-half hours by car through the forests and fields west of Helsinki. Aleksi starts to tell his story as he drives us the final half an hour or so to the island on his little motorboat, skimming across the gray sea past scores of islets ground down by glacial ice, with infrequent glimpses of unobtrusive little gable-roofed summer houses. His love for this "rocky-romantic" place comes through powerfully, despite his typically Finnish bone-dry delivery.

Milla and Aleski Hautamäki, the owners of Project Ö.

Aleksi first came to this protected corner of the archipelago 15 years ago, on a sailing boat with his father. It is remote and relatively undiscovered, even by Finns, but over time it became "the place where my heart lives." When demanding clients got too much, he’d sail here from Helsinki, sleeping on his boat in the sloshing near-silence. A little more than five years ago, he decided he’d like a base in the archipelago, if only because he couldn't have a sauna on his boat. He and Milla, who now have a young son, started looking for their Goldilocks island. Something small, but with just enough space for exploration and to build a jetty. They scoured Google Maps and government databases to track down generations-old owners, often to be dismissed ("a lot of people thought we were crazy"). Eventually they found it: a five-acre islet called Skjulskäret, whose owners inherited it as part of a larger deal and were happy for Aleksi and Milla to buy it. The couple sold their Helsinki flat to fund the purchase and most of the work, which began in 2018.

The covered outdoor cooking area was inspired by Japanese minimalism.

Kaila Yu

Marianna Cerini

Katherine McLaughlin

Nicole Schnitzler

There's a purity and clarity to the result, which Aleksi, clearly a quick learner with an obsessive streak, designed and partly built himself, with an intimate sympathy for the island's rocky contours. For the narrow main building, with its covered outdoor cooking area separating the bedroom and living space from the bathroom and sauna, he was inspired by Japanese small-house minimalism, but also wanted a traditional gabled roof ("Japanese and Finnish design have this unlikely crossover," he says). An adjacent building houses Aleksi's hyper-organized tool shed, and a room full of contraptions that keep the place running, including extra-large batteries and an elaborate seawater-purification system. While professionals built much of the main structure, Aleksi took a three-and-a-half-month sabbatical to create the jetty, low-impact walkways, and many sea-view seating areas, as well as using his self taught carpentry skills on the cozy interiors, with picture windows at either end. The best view, naturally, is from the sauna.

The small tree-covered hunk of granite and gneiss—one of more than 40,000 islands in the Finnish Archipelago.

The somewhat manic intensity of the work behind the island is in sharp contrast to the mind-soothing experience of being a guest on it, with trips here organized by high-end villa rental company Stay One (the name relates to the finest one percent of home rentals). That sense is epitomized by the feeling of sweating in the sauna before running off the jetty into the cold water, all goosebumps and breathy delirium. I become compulsive about lighting fires, including the log burner in the cozy, neutral-toned living room with its hidden mezzanine. We explore every forest glade, tree swing, and outlook; every static muddy pool, each one a metropolis for tiny insects; the little castaway beach that Aleksi created with imported sand. In the sauna one evening, as I watch distant little islands darken in the gloaming, I think of something the TV personality Ben Fogle once told me about islands: that they are "discrete and legible"; places where animals like us can easily compute our surroundings, and find peace rather than chaos.

Despite being off-grid, we eat remarkably well. We arrive to find Tupperware containers and brown paper bags prepared by Ellen Järvinen and Will Brennan, who run Kallarvinden Café in Kasnäs. They contain everything from fennel-cured salmon to a beef and foraged mushroom pot pie, with beautifully branded sets of cooking instructions. The black micro-kitchen, like everything else, is an exercise in pared-back elegance and clever use of space. Everything fits seamlessly, from the dressing gowns by Lapuan Kankurit to the oils and bath products by Japanese-inspired local brand Hetkinen, with scents evocative of the forests.

Kaila Yu

Marianna Cerini

Katherine McLaughlin

Nicole Schnitzler

The property boasts a series of forest walkways.

Perhaps the most magical spot here isn't quite visible when you arrive by boat. A series of forest walkways leads to an A-frame on the other side of the island from the main building, with glass walls and a kitchen at one end. One evening, Aleksi arrives on his boat with Ellen and Will, who will serve us dinner as we look over the channel to a neighboring island. As Will plates up an exquisite Kimito beef tartare with fermented local blackcurrants, he explains how he met Ellen at cooking school in the UK; how he came back with her to her home region to help turn the café she already owned into a quietly impressive love letter to the terroir of the Kimito region. When the summer ends, and tourism freezes along with the archipelago sea, the pair head to Helsinki to work in some of the capital's smartest restaurants.

As the sky turns purple-ish, Ellen cheerily serves foraged nettle and spinach soup; chanterelle, ricotta and sage ravioli; and a creamy take on the local dessert of blueberries with milk and sugar, washed down with schnapps infused with mugwort and dill. This is the Swedish corner of Finland, and her first language is a mellifluous localised Swedish, rather than Finnish—or "Moomin-Swedish", she jokes, a reference to Swedish Speaking, Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson.

There are landscape windows everywhere at Project ö, including the shower.

The following day, Aleksi pick us up for a spin around the archipelago on his boat. He can build activities into stays, including visits to the nearby Rousal Brygghus island microbrewery or the imposing Bengtskär lighthouse. Further west, we stop at another beautiful island he hopes to build on. As we walk, he explains his plans for a larger project here. He has been energized rather than scarred by the experience of creating this place, and is ready for the next fix. For me, though, all this planning feels a lot like hard work. I am on Island Time, attuned to the light and the sea. And I’m ready for my next sauna.

This article originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveller U.K.