This
house for a small family is located in a residential area in Belgium. In
this first stage, the client asked for a small house with a high level of
detail. After some time, the house will be enlarged by adding some
additional volumes to accommodate their future needs. Because
of the shape and location of the land, three important points were to be
considered when designing the house.
First of
all, because it is a very small house, the quality of living should remain
high. Therefore, the street level is designed as an open area, with big
windows towards the garden, to enable the inner rooms to expand into the
outside with as little as possible amount of borderlines.
Secondly,
there is an issue of privacy, since the building is located on a corner of two
streets. The facades of the building facing the streets are kept as close
as possible, while the other sides are very open. In the street facades
we made some openings to enable a dialogue with the surrounding area and not
close it completely from the neighbourhood.
Third,
the sculptural stairs in the living area connect the lower and upper floors in
a playfull way.
The
construction of this building consists mainly out of a steel frame, cladded
with panels. Since the building is well insulated, it was also a good
opportunity to reduce energy consumption costs using solar panels combined with
an underground heat pump and low temperature heating. This system also
allows cooling down the house in the summer.
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