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Architects: Marge architecten bv
- Area: 200 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Johnny Umans
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Manufacturers: Betesco, Btichino, Forbo, Nobili, Sapa Building System International NV, Vande Moortel, Villeroy & Boch , Winckelmans
Text description provided by the architects. A renewable passive house in an urban environment, where lifelong living and sober luxury are part of the package.
In the front façade, you can find an alcove to take shelter when it’s raining. All around you find brick and glass. Behind the door lies a robust entrance. On the right a multifunctional space: laundry room, bicycle storage, and even a sports area. Behind, living functions. A patio cuts through the mass. Black tiles, wood, and structured glass in the kitchen. Concrete. Behind the last room: the garden. A stairwell curls around an opening and rises to the first floor. Spaces that can be bedrooms, or something else. A thin seam is visible in the ceiling. Here, the floor can be demounted to make a hole in the entire house. Later an elevator can be fitted into the hole. A small bathroom enables the future further. A wild green roof is visible from the window. The second floor has the quality of a penthouse. A withdrawn volume sunk between two more wild green roofs. A bedroom and a bathroom. Too big and with a view. The house has load-bearing walls from the front to the rear façade so all dividing walls could be removed theoretically in case the future would prove it necessary. In the core of the house, along the patio, a stately staircase is installed in a concrete stairwell.
Having houses from the interwar period in mind, a game of texture, alcoves, offsets, patterns and orientations of the bricks is elaborated. Every brick is drawn. The brickwork jumping forward on the first floor reminds one of a typical alcove. The entrance below is fitted in a recessed alcove. Zones of vertical brickwork demarcate the floors.
Brute exposed concrete for all load-bearing structures: the ceilings, the columns, the stairs, the concrete walls at the stairwell, and the facades. Ceramic tiles for all wet spaces, both the floor and the worktops: black in the kitchen and white in all sanitary facilities. Warm floors for the dry spaces: wooden parquet for the living space, colorful linoleum in the sleeping parts. Birch multiplex for all customized pieces: the kitchen and bathroom cupboards, the stair railing, and the reveals of the windows. Dark bronze anodized windows for all facades. Where obscurity is wanted, we use textured glass. This happens in the façade or the kitchen, or between the hall and the entrance. All bespoke furniture is meticulously drawn out. The joints of the tiles follow the furniture modulations. Cupboard doors, grips, kitchen island, sink, … all align with the lines of the tiles. What opens, is made of wood. What can get wet or dirty is made of tiles.
