圣安娜丨比利时丨Decancq Vercruysse Architects

Sint-Anna transforms a once-blocky 1970s house in Kortrijk, Belgium, into an elevated retreat by Decancq-Vercruysse Architects. The project inverts the traditional layout, lifting everyday living to the first floor and surrounding it with terraces and trees. What began as an under-budget duplex becomes a calm suburban home, tuned to garden light, shifting seasons, and a quieter pace of life.

Twilight settles across the leafy suburb as the upper floor comes alive with small points of light. Inside, ceilings are higher, windows are wider, and the garden reads as a continuous green band. A concrete stair coils around the perimeter, drawing movement upward before a single door opens into the tree-line.

This house in Kortrijk reworks a 1970s two-apartment block into a single dwelling organized around an inverted plan. Decancq-Vercruysse Architects shift living and gathering rooms to the first floor, while bedrooms rest at garden level for greater calm and privacy. The through-line is clear: circulation and daily life pivot around going up, out, and around, with terraces and glazing tying every room to the changing seasons.

Flipping The House

The most radical move is the vertical switch between public and private zones. Living, dining, and kitchen now occupy the upper level, turning what was once a low-ceilinged roof zone into the main stage for daily life. Bedrooms drop down to the ground floor, buffered by garden planting and the thicker envelope of the original structure.

This inversion allows the first floor to act almost like a tree-house, lifted above the street and threaded through mature branches. From here, the view stretches across the undulating suburbs, echoing distant hills and city lights. The plan no longer reads as a stacked duplex; it works as one continuous home organized around ascent.

Carving Light And Views

To support this new hierarchy, the architects cut larger openings into the old shell. Windows widen along key sightlines, turning once-small apertures into generous frames toward garden and skyline. Raising the roof by half a metre releases compressed ceilings, giving the upper level a calmer, more expansive volume.

Light now enters from multiple sides, so each room holds a slightly different reading of the day. Morning might land in the kitchen, while evening glows through living room glass and around the terraces. The original block form stays, but its relationship to sky, trees, and distance is rewritten through this careful re-carving.

Stair As Threshold

Outside, a concrete stair wraps the house and leads directly to the elevated front door. Arrival becomes a slow spiral past trunks, branches, and glimpses into interior rooms. Each turn of the stair marks a subtle shift in view, from street edge to garden canopy and finally to the wider suburban horizon.

This external route reinforces the idea that the heart of the home sits one level up. Ground-floor bedrooms can remain quiet, even when guests arrive late or children run outside. The stair reads as both threshold and promenade, a daily reminder that the house is now organized around moving vertically before settling in.

Flexible Upper-Level Living

Once inside, rooms on the first floor flow into one another, forming a continuous sequence for eating, sitting, and working. Ash wood slatted dividers stand between these zones, ready to pivot their role depending on season and mood. Open, they extend views across the plan and pull light deep into the core.

Closed, the same slatted planes break the level into smaller pockets suited to winter evenings or quiet retreat. This adjustability lets the upper floor respond to social rhythms as much as to climate. In summer, terraces and large windows loosen the boundary between interior and garden; in winter, the layout folds back into a more compact, sheltered arrangement.

As day gives way to night, the house reads from outside as a calm lantern above the trees. Inside, circulation, view, and enclosure all stem from that first decision to flip the plan. Sint-Anna stands as a study in how a simple shift in levels, paired with careful cuts of light and movement, can give a dated structure a clear new life.