Ola Gaute Aas Askheim, an Oslo marketing consultant, realized that the backyard of his house, in the city’s exclusive Holmenkollen neighborhood, was a blank slate for a new way of living.
He decided in 2010 to sell off his 3,874-square-foot 1930s villa and part of the original lot and use proceeds to finance his dream home on the remaining land.

Today, he has a new, smaller three-level structure with dramatic views of the Oslo Fiord and light pouring in from four exposures. The 2,303-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bathroom house also has a soundproof music room for letting loose on his electric guitar, and a winter garden for growing tomatoes and citrus fruits.

The whole house has custom, nearly invisible storage spaces and a discreet 430-square-foot, one-bedroom rental apartment at the garage level for income.

Mr. Askheim moved in January.
The home cost $1.61 million to design and build. In 2013, he sold his old house for 14 million Norwegian kroner, or $2.3 million. Mr. Askheim had bought the property in 2005 for $1.3 million and invested about $294,000 in renovations.
Starting in the summer of 2010, Mr. Askheim worked with Knut Hjeltnes —a local architect and childhood friend—to create what the owner likes to call “an honest house” with as few materials as possible.
“I told Knut that I like glass, oak, concrete and Cor-Ten steel,” says Mr. Askheim, a 53-year-old senior consultant at Opinion AS, an Oslo-based market-research company and a professor of marketing at Oslo’s Westerdals School of Communication. He asked neighbors their opinion on the suitability of his new home’s design.

The living room and dining area on the home’s top floor have oak-lined interiors, in contrast to the industrial look of the double-sided Cor-Ten fireplace. A south-facing glass wall lets in the sun through the day. Select sections of entryway floors are concrete, a low-maintenance choice that took into consideration Mr. Askheim’s 5-year-old pet Weimaraner, Leo, who often comes home wet and muddy after playing outside.

The house’s standout material isn’t something Mr. Askheim had requested, or even had known about beforehand: aerogel. It is a high-tech, lightweight, glasslike substance used in everything from structural insulation to tennis rackets that is finding its way into homes. The architect integrated translucent aerogel panels into three outer walls. “Light can flood in,” says Mr. Askheim, but they are opaque enough for him to maintain privacy.
In the living room, the east aerogel wall is like a floor-to-ceiling light fixture. At the northern end, in a narrow space set up as a home office, Mr. Askheim uses a second aerogel wall as a glowing bulletin board.
Construction on the new house started in July 2012 and was finished a year later. Mr. Askheim was still living right next door. “I followed it very closely,” he says of the construction phase. “I could stand in the kitchen and look down on the building site—that was cool.”
Mr. Askheim decided to hire an engineer to be a project manager and troubleshooter—at a cost of about $95,000.
“Usually, the general contractor oversees everything,” says Mr. Hjeltnes, who specializes in high-end, single-family homes.
Mr. Askheim credits his project manager with helping to get the project off the ground, including locating a builder willing to work with aerogel. The manager also helped with the home’s single greatest challenge and largest unforeseen expense: landscaping the steeply sloped lot for the new house and creating a clear boundary with the former home.
The final landscaping price tag—which included the unexpected construction of the concrete barrier between the lots, and the significant removal of soil and stones—was $139,000, more than twice what he had estimated.
Within weeks of moving in with his teenage daughter, Mr. Askheim says, “I met the love of my life.” He now also shares the home with his partner, Gro Ann Grimsmo, who works for a property developer.
Since moving in, Mr. Askheim has experienced a glitch or two. A rectangular glass window in the master bedroom cracked and must be replaced. A futuristic array of LED lights, capable of transmitting colors like red and violet, is now stuck on yellow-white pending a repair. And he has yet to acquire softer, “more organic” furniture to replace the black-leather pieces from his former house.
He is also looking to fill out his band now that he can rehearse at home. Designed with acoustically sensitive beechwood paneling and an angled wall to absorb echoes, the music room allows Mr. Askheim and his band to play “as loud as I like,” he says. That is something he could never do in the old house.