“Ex Box” is a summer house designed by Ott Kadarik for his ex-wife, the heritage and restoration expert Hilkka Hiiop, and it is located on the edge of Padaoru in Lääne-Viru County. In keeping with the owner’s profession, the summer house is placed within a crumbling manor complex, at the heart of a cattle castle with buildings in various stages of decay.

The laconic, cuboid wooden volume—slightly raised at one end—is strategically situated in a square courtyard enclosed by limestone and fieldstone walls, articulating the space into strongly defined outdoor alcoves of different sizes and atmospheres. As a result, in addition to the spacious, open-plan interior room, several outdoor “rooms” open up beneath the sky.

Large, irregularly arranged glass openings cut into the timber cube’s walls, together with the surrounding terrace and canopy, bind the interior and exterior into an inseparable whole. Old love does not rust—but a great deal of reused materials with which the building is finished, inside and out, certainly patinates, decays, and rusts.

The interior is characterised by a cast-iron bathtub left to rust with its exterior exposed, an old steel barrel repurposed as a table base, and a picturesquely restored historic wooden door. The exterior, meanwhile, is clad in a mosaic of timber offcuts—chosen with an artist’s hand—of every possible age, quality, and appearance.