Uitbreiding tweewoonst Leefdaal

(...) In the renovation work on a detached nineteenth-century townhouse in Leefdaal, carried out by architecten de vylder vinck taillieu, this type of façade surface was actually imitated: an existing brick façade was painted with diamond-pattern tiles. In this instance, it is not just a single constructional intervention, but an outburst of playful details. Ordinary things are shifted and transformed. Just as in a game of jackstraws, visitors are invited to pick up the elements of the game themselves. In the extension volume, where there is once again a kitchen, no explanatory emblem ever appears. Here it is the sudden revelation that dominates. The base on which the new volume is grafted consists of concrete blocks, coloured pipes and plain beams. Two plinths merge into a corner staircase. The stacking of round and angular elements – ‘how does it stay still?’ – injects dynamism into this base. As a result, the entire extension resembles a stage installation that rolled along and settled into a corner space, but one that could just as easily continue rolling onwards. This kinetic impatience enables a tension between recognition and alienation to be created. In this way, the extension makes eyes at the nineteenth-century main volume, because the surface and form of the old doorway were retained. The finely chased rib structure that gives a pattern to the glass surface also seems to have sprung from the brain of a nineteenth-century engineer. (...)

Rajesh Heynickx - Excerpt from Flanders Architectural Review N°13. This Is a Mustard Factory