De Kleine Prins
Dhooge & Meganck Architecture
Gent
Dhooge & Meganck Architectuur designed this sawtooth extension to a terraced house on a narrow, curved plot. The structure of the new volume was conceived as three remarkably shaped wooden rafters. They start as a column on the ground floor and grow into a chamfered beam that leans onto the party wall. High-up windows draw soft northern light into these living quarters. The form of the rafters was reinterpreted in the design of the metal balustrades for the first-floor windows. The three wooden trusses determine the project in formal, rhythmic and spatial ways. They also create an unexpected and expressive coherence.
- Louis De Mey
This project is part of the exhibition Composite Presence in the Belgian pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Dhooge & Meganck Architectuur: "This is a renovation and extension of a single-family house. The site is located on a collision between two scales: a sequence of terraced houses bumps awkwardly and folds towards an apartment building. Both sides speak a specific language and are developed according to particular rules. We saw this friction as an unmistakable quality. There is an expression that states: ‘without friction, no shine’. This clash indeed allowed the design of the house to tackle and reinterpret other typological proportions and spatial folds. We see these challenges as opportunities that do not exist in a monotonous typological landscape."
