Weekend House

In this complex domain of semi-private properties and historic rights of way, Kersten Geers and David Van Severen inserted a house of another order behind an existing terrace. A 2.40-metre-high surrounding wall delineates a ground plan of four successive rooms. The rectangular spaces fill the entire breadth of the plot and contain, in succession, a courtyard, a tropical greenhouse with a pool, a living area with a kitchen, and an outdoor space with all the stateliness of a classical front garden. Each room is identical and unique. A steel cornice rests on the brick walls as the perimeter of the building, and also functions as the conductor of a movable glass roof. The roof shifts over the courtyard, or over the pool, and can be shielded from the sun. The living room, with kitchen furniture and a curved screen, is fitted with a closed roof. The garden, lastly, remains open.

That separation of the plan elements – of inside and outside – continues throughout all echelons of the design: double walls, rooms that are mirrored numerous times, two houses instead of one. On the outside, the house remains unfinished: a brick shell, covered with fittings and conductors. Inside, a sequence of perspectives emerges referencing the endless grid floors of Italian utopists: a tropical suburbia where a dip in the pool is larger than life, a delightful idleness that momentarily places itself beyond reality.

Author: Stefan devoldere. This text has been published in the Architecture Review Flanders N°11. Embedded Architecture.