The interior plan resembles the icon of a house. A solitary triangular concrete column and adjacent sunken seating area give structure to the open plan. An open concrete staircase links the ground floor to the upper level. The warm accents of the plywood in the built-in furniture balances the austere character of the brutal concrete. Colour accents in the sliding door, skylights and bathrooms add a playful touch to the house.
--
(un)heimlich maneuver - Glenn Lyppens
In the historic Flemish village street, in the shadow of the church tower, a building and living culture directed by agriculture and piety existed for centuries. Supported by the use of local building materials, this produced an organic image quality that was in harmony with the surrounding landscape. However, this changed rapidly with the development of the post-war welfare state. Former agricultural plots along old and new village streets were parceled out into uniform pieces of land on which individual families could build their own homes – not rarely influenced by what lifestyle magazines labelled as "fashionable".
The urge to steer the impending consumerism on these plots in the right direction led to the development of the so-called landmetersdoorsnede or surveyor's cross-section. To this day, this urban design instrument provides every self-builder with an unambiguously interpretable gabarit that can easily be extruded plot by plot. The Kuiperstraat in Vorselaar, an important connection between the outskirts and center of the village, presents itself as a pars pro toto of this pressing. The street opens up on both sides to an almost unsightly ribbon of individual housing dreams in different architectural styles and building types. The buildings have become a buffer between the thoroughfare made unsafe by mechanical traffic and a privatised , protected world of extensions and deep garden culture. Here and there a joint or gap in the ribbon allows a glimpse of the dovecotes or garage boxes behind.
It is within this setting that i.s.m.architecten realised a single-family house for a couple with two young children. On a double plot, a semi-detached building was designed as a kind of bookend at the end of a stretch of terraced houses. Although at the rear the envelope follows the imposed traditional gabarit, at the same time it also evades this legal power by introducing a peculiar play of forms. Whereas most houses in the street have their front façade and address frontal to the sidewalk, here the façade nods away from the street from a single point into two directions, each at an angle of 45 degrees. This creates a triangular gap - a walled void - between the house and its left-hand neighbour. On the other slanting side, a wedge-shaped front garden emerges. Herein, lower plantings maintain a certain distance from the garden behind and the right-hand neighbour - a nineteenth-century village house. This unusual facade development literally detaches the house from both its neighbours, generating a sculptural objet trouvé that increases in strength through the materialization in concrete. Due to the rather rough in situ formwork, at first glance, the sculpture resembles a basement duplex that has risen from the ground. Only a few sparse façade perforations, as well as the aluminum panel door that betrays the entrance to the building through its reflection of sunlight, make passers-by believe that this address is indeed inhabitable. Unheimlich - like a performance by Lightning Bolt in a retirement home - is perhaps the most appropriate way to describe this sight succinctly.
Inside the house, the plan structure generates a striking centripetal force, with the uncomfortable quickly giving way to intimate domesticity. Upon entering, residents have no choice but to be guided to the heart of the home along the walled patio and a strong perspective twist. The various living activities - working, cooking, eating - take place in almost one continuous space that is subtly zoned by a solitary triangular concrete column and a sunken seating area that reminds a bit of a João Vilanova Artigas intervention. Attracted by zenithal skimming light, this space continues upwards via an open concrete staircase and, along an oversized landing (with a view upon the street), it narrows into the intimate night functions - a bit of a cavernous experience. At the same time, the austere character of the brutal concrete is balanced with warm accents in the form of plywood built-in furniture and wainscoting.
The house forms a plastic continuum that, by widening or narrowing, deepening or raising, generates more or less intimate zones. The kinks in the geometry of the floor plan create a play of changing perspectives between the spaces themselves and between the interior and the outside space. Both the well-aimed window openings and the walled void play a subtle and fascinating game with the surroundings. This way of shaping ‘the act of dwelling’, through the exploration of renewed relationships between open and enclosed space, between public and private, between exterior and interior, between street and home, is reminiscent of what Sou Fujimoto once referred to as (the difficult to translate the concept of) kankeisei. This is by no means coincidental. After all, a strong fascination with Japanese (residential) culture has long been part of the design discourse of i.s.m.architecten. As a matter of fact , an important reference that triggered an enlightening reflection on the design brief is Tadao Ando's Azuma House. Built in Osaka in 1976, the house was a response to its noisy and hectic urban environment outside. As a capsule, it creates its own reality by organizing all rooms around a central void. The consequence of the idea of allowing residents to get closer to intense natural phenomena such as silence, wind, and rain, is that a part of the outer world must be excluded through architectural maneuvers. Where the only relationship with the street is through a narrow front door, nature is "captured" and involved in intimate living through the placement of a walled void.
In the Kuiperstraat too, an introverted residential framework comes into being, partly driven by a kind of aversion to the banality of the outside world that undermines the quality of 'living'. Yet it would be a misconception to call the house indifferent to the genius loci of the street. Although the street is pushed away through the patio, seemingly trivial street elements such as a lantern and the neighbouring party wall are actually incredibly intensified. The street as a public space may be kept at a distance but is never really shut out.
This house stands out as the result of not only an intensive search for the spatial translation of the proposed program of requirements but also, at the very least, of a thorough investigation into how a critical position can be taken within the predictable extrusion of the imposed gabarit. The seemingly discomfort of this concrete house lies in the fact that it radically shakes up the traditional image of what ‘village architecture’ should be. To accomplish this, the house fights village urbanism with its own weapons. Within the landmetersdoorsnede, it finds margins - in-between spaces - to both distance from and connect with its surroundings. The house builds tension between holding back and seeking contact, hiding and displaying, modesty and attention whoring. In the architectural language of the village, the house displays itself, precisely because of its radical liberation, as a kind of self-evidence.
Location
completion
client
program
architecture
interior architecture
photographs
completion
client
program
architecture
interior architecture
photographs
Vorselaar(BE)
2020
Private
Newly built concrete house
i.s.m.architecten
i.s.m.architecten
Luis Dìaz Dìaz
2020
Private
Newly built concrete house
i.s.m.architecten
i.s.m.architecten
Luis Dìaz Dìaz