Verbouwen woning

The conversion of a detached villa in the Ghent area by ectv architects (Els Claessens en Tania Vandenbussche) can be concisely summarised as the rationalisation of a 1950s house to which several alterations have been made. The matter of obsolete and poorly accommodated domestic requirements meant that this house had – as usual – been extended by means of a back kitchen with a bathroom on the first floor, plus an oversized entrance hall. On the ground floor there was a rarely used ‘best room’.

Rather than adding anything new – the sediment of the 2000s – the architects decided to restructure the house internally so that the available volume could be put to better use by the new occupants: a family with three children. This enabled the designers to remove the back extensions, which improved the relationship between the house and the garden, whilst also restoring the original volume. This volume was given a completely new façade.

The façade focuses quite explicitly on the conversion: the masonry on the ground floor uses a different bond to the rest of the volume, the window frames are in wood and not aluminium as on the upper floors, and the lintel above the windows has been developed into a cornice that runs round the corner. This gives rise to an almost graphic expression of a transformation process that, in other instances, often leads to parasitic volumes and the incongruous use of materials. The old body of the house is not given a prosthesis, but a new skin.

This text is based on an article by Maarten Delbeke, published in Architecture Review Flanders N°10. Radical Commonplaces. European Architectures from Flanders.