The project for the Van Zanten House tackles several them of contemporary living. Within the scenery of a popular suburb that characterises the surrounding of the lot, Van Zanten House stands out as a declaration that living is an introspective microcosm. The idea was to design the house as an embodiment of its inhabitants.
In order to permit a constant interchange between parts of the house and members of the family, the building contains as many routes as possible: a municipality of itineraries permeates and characterises the building, creating a constant relationship between the ?blocks? of the house and the ?bodies? of the people living within it. Almost all rooms differ in shape and size, including the zones of circulation, and communicate with one another: the result is a complex and stratified inhabitable landscape. Kenneth Frampton has placed the accent on the ?indistinct balance between the phenomenological quality of the skin and the contrapuntal capacity of the space? I this house, in which the basic concept of human interaction -looking and being looked- is the key element inside the skin that covers it.
Split into three volumes that occupy the central part of the lot, the house divides the land into two gardens that are similar in their layout but different in their configuration: one is located on a lower and flattened level, the other on a slope linking it with the level of the road.
On the first floor the entire perimeter of the house is faced with a continuous skin of glass that makes it possible, through a different treatment of the material, to modify the degree of privacy and to determine the level of closure, use and movement between the inside and outside of the house. The two massive suspended volumes clad in zinc sit on top of the glass shell and houses the private zone. The private area of the family is located o this level split between the parents? zone and the children?s zone.
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