In Lelystad, a detached house for a retired couple was renovated and provided with an extension on ground level, making the house suitable for lifelong living. The existing garage was made somewhat smaller; it now houses a bathroom and a built-in wardrobe. The extension houses the new bedroom, which is virtually freestanding in the garden.
The structure has the solitary character of a garden house, because it is attached to the existing house like a peninsula. From the existing house, you walk through the utility room into a new hall with the bathroom attached. You enter a new world via a lock-like passage. Here you have the feeling that you are staying in the middle of the garden as in a shack in nature.
The extension is tailormade to its function and is situated between the existing trees in the garden. A large Accoya wooden sliding door that slides along the outside of the facade reinforces the feeling of dwelling and sleeping in nature. The rainwater that falls on the corten steel roof is guided past the windows by the roof overhang and falls into the red mine grit. The facade is constructed from Viroc panels on the inside and outside. These are fibre cement panels that have the raw character of concrete, but are easier to handle and more affordable. The glass wall runs above the low build in cabinets. The glass runs around both corners, making the large roof seem to float here and the space optically continues. The glass corners, lacking the Accoya wooden frames, reinforce this. Because the glass starts at bed height, you can look out into the garden from your bed. In principle, the window blinds are not necessary from a privacy point of view, because the neighbours cannot look in here.
The roof is low at the edges, just high enough to walk under it, but high in the middle. This creates very nice contrasts in the spatial experience. The space feels spacious, but at the same time also secure.
The architecture of the existing house is fairly neutral, it is a so-called catalogue house. The quality of the place is mainly in the large garden, which has become quite ‘mature’ after about 20 years. The beautiful garden and the existing house gave rise to the idea to cut the extension as much as possible from the existing house and in this way position the extension freely, but still connected to the house in the garden. As a result, the architecture of the extension does not have to enter into a dialogue with the existing house, but can profile itself as a room in the garden.
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