Eco House

Vadim Anisimov is a typical Russian. For only a Russian would build a boat in his 42 square meter apartment, lowering it down from the window when it was completed. And who but a Russian would quit a prestigious job and leave behind a cozy, quiet life to live in a shambles of a village?

Anisimov lives in Berezhnoye, in a wooden house on top of which he built a special observatory to watch the stars. His path to Berezhnoye village began in the 1970s. He was a promising young scientist at the Karelian Pedagogical Institute and a member of the Scythians Tourist Club. This social movement explored a new route in Karelia called “In the Footsteps of the Spellbinders”—the magicians who created the handmade wooden monuments of architecture in Karelia. The Scythians’s goal was not simply to discover creations of wooden architecture, but also to help protect them from lightning. They installed lightning rods on dozens of chapels and churches, saving them for future generations.

This was when Anisimov became addicted to Karelian nature and wildlife. Back then, he noticed the little village of Berezhnoye and dreamed “of living the rest of his life there.” So, when a turn-of-the century peasant’s house went on sale there, Anisimov bought it without even thinking (plus the price was very low).