When we began developing Scandinavian Domes, we did almost everything ourselves. In fact, we had to. To understand how to build a dome, we needed to get to know the materials, machines and every stage of the work. We sawed timber, cut polycarbonate, tried different solutions and rebuilt things when reality did not quite match the drawing.
But learning to do something is different from deciding you must always do it yourself.
The closer we have come to real, repeatable production, the more important another question has become: who should we do this with?
At heart, a dome uses relatively few materials. Timber carries the structure. Polycarbonate lets in light and protects against the weather. Metal appears in the fireplace and in the products we develop around fire. But each material comes with knowledge that takes a long time to acquire.
That is why some of our most important recent steps forward have involved new partnerships, rather than new machines at Granberget.
We learned a great deal when we began sawing timber ourselves. We learned how much two pieces of pine can differ even when they look almost identical at first glance, and how much the quality of the raw material affects everything that follows. We also learned how difficult it is to obtain exactly the quality we want, time after time, on our own.
Our partnership with Stefan Olsson and Olssons Såg & Hyvleri has changed that. The company in Ovanmo, near Ramsele, has worked with timber since 1908 and remains a family business. Stefan understands wood in a way that comes only from many years of experience.
Through Stefan, we can now source pine heartwood for parts exposed to the weather and pine that is virtually free of knots for the structure itself. The quality is higher and more consistent than what we achieved when we sawed the raw material ourselves. That means less sorting and fewer compromises at Granberget—and, above all, a better starting material for digital production.
The partnership is especially interesting because Stefan’s business is, in many ways, on a journey similar to ours. Four generations of knowledge about forests and timber are being combined with investment in more modern production. Olssons has, among other things, invested in a new planing mill in recent years. For Stefan, progress also means creating the conditions for the next generation to keep sawing.
The same thinking has changed the way we work with the dome’s transparent triangles.
In the first prototypes, we did much of the polycarbonate work ourselves. That mattered because it helped us understand the material and find the right design. But handling large sheets, measuring, cutting and producing all the different triangles takes both time and space—and every extra step is another opportunity for variation.
Today we work with Stocksundet, which supplies the 3 mm SAPHIR polycarbonate used in the dome. SAPHIR is a clear polycarbonate from Arla Plast with a hard surface coating designed, among other things, to improve scratch resistance, dirt repellence and UV resistance. Stocksundet offers cutting to size and can also arrange angled cuts and machine contour cutting.
For us, that means the polycarbonate can be much closer to a finished component before it reaches Granberget. Instead of spending time preparing another raw material for production, we can focus on assembly and on how timber, polycarbonate and seals work together. It is a fairly simple change, but an important gain in efficiency when a prototype must become a product that can be built again and again.
The third material is metal. There, we found a partner much closer to Granberget.
Jonah Pettersson runs JP Teknikverkstad in Dorotea. His workshop works digitally, allowing us to collaborate in much the same way we want to work with timber: ideas and drawings can be developed digitally, tested in reality and adjusted until form, function and manufacture work together.
The clearest result is our fireplace for the dome. Fire has been part of Scandinavian Domes almost from the beginning. We wanted a real open fire in the centre of the room, but the solution also had to work with the dome’s geometry, ventilation and materials. Together with Jonah, we developed the design step by step, moving from an idea to parts that can be made with high precision.
Our collaboration has also grown beyond the dome itself. Together we have developed fire rings, fire reindeer and freestanding fire bowls for cooking and warmth, along with griddle and grill tables that can be suspended above the fire. These are products in their own right, but they build on the same idea: traditional materials and simple functions can find new forms when craft knowledge meets digital design and manufacture.
In a way, these partnerships show that Scandinavian Domes is beginning to move beyond the prototype stage.
At first, doing much of the work ourselves was important precisely because we needed to learn. Now it is equally important to understand what we should ask others to do. We do not need to become the best at sawing raw timber, processing polycarbonate sheets or making metal parts. But we do need to understand the materials well enough to specify what we require and work with people who know them better than we do.
Stefan knows timber. Jonah knows metal. Stocksundet knows polycarbonate and how to process it. At Granberget, our task is to bring all of these together in one structure.
This is another kind of digital production, beyond what we see when our five-axis CNC machine is running. Drawings, models and precise dimensions allow production to be shared among several workshops without losing accuracy. Granberget is still far from many things. But distance need not mean the same thing in digital production.
When we began this journey, we may have thought that the path towards the Perfect Dome would mainly be about what we ourselves needed to learn to do.
Now we are beginning to understand that it is just as much about the people we learn to do it with.
During the summer of 2026, we selected three pilot partners from almost 100 applications from Sweden and abroad. The pilot year has now begun with installations in Hemavan, Åre and Borgafjäll.
Under sommaren 2026 valde vi ut tre pilotkunder bland närmare 100 intresseanmälningar från Sverige och andra länder. Pilotåret har nu inletts med installationer i Hemavan, Åre och Borgafjäll.
Tillsammans med våra pilotkunder kommer vi under det kommande året att vidareutveckla varje del av Scandinavian Domes – från materialval och hantverk till logistik, installation och långsiktig hållbarhet – inför den bredare marknadslanseringen 2027.