丨比利时丨AE architecten

Architects:AE-architecten

Area:130m²

Year:2024

Photographs:Stijn Bollaert

Category:Residential Architecture,Houses

Design Team:Jack Bailey, Duarte Miranda

Engineering & Consulting > Civil:H110

City:Ghent

Country:Belgium

Text description provided by the architects. A young family decides to exchange their apartment in the city for a detached house with a garden on the edge of the city, a stone's throw from the center, during the Corona pandemic. It is a dated house from 1958 with a number of 'modern' features. The assignment was to turn this house into a fresh, contemporary family home with a relationship to the garden and references to the Case-study houses, car, and interior design.

The house is situated in a very specific context of the city. On the one hand, it is located in a suburban area, in an old development in the 20th-century belt of Ghent, near the picturesque Leie. This means that this house is slightly elevated in the greenery between old trees. On the other hand, this house is also very close to the centre, approximately 2.5 km from Ghent Sint-Pieters Station. This means that the comfort of both urban and suburban areas is combined on the site.

What to do with all the houses in the 20th-century belt around the city, houses that are too good to tear down but not good enough to preserve or restore? Our approach consists of treating the house as a palimpsest, where we strengthen the existing qualities and add new contemporary layers and comfort. In this way, we try to transform the house with respect for older parts into a new, contemporary, future-proof house.

In the house, we looked at where the most interesting spaces were. The former garage was situated in a special location in the garden with an east-south-west orientation. For this, we found it important to upgrade the garage to a dining area and kitchen and to connect this space to the living space. This allowed us to create a specific spaciousness and special views. Furthermore, we mainly made very precise interventions as a kind of acupuncture within the existing structure.

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