REMODELING A FAMILY HOME
The client, a family of five, wishes to adapt their home, built in the early seventies, to their present needs. They wish to gather all the bedrooms on one floor hence two further bedrooms and one additional bathroom are required.
The ground floor should offer more living room and the entrance is to be rearranged more generously.
Furthermore, the houses energetic performance should be improved by replacing the oil-fired heating with a geothermal heat pump and by adding further insulation to the roof and the facade.
Since the house is located in a rural environment, its outer shape is only allowed to be modified slightly.
On the ground floor the main operation consists in adding the volume of the former garage to the living room area and therein placing the new kitchen.
Not only provides this transformation the required additional living space, but also the whole spatial organisation and the visual relations are completely redefined.
Previously, the entrance, the kitchen and the living romm were rather disjoined from each other. Now they come together in a generous spatial entity which is articulated by the new kitchen.
The floor of the former garage is a worktop-hight below the living room. This difference is preserved, which results in the worktop being on the same level as the ground floor. The sunken position of the kitchen generates interesting and surprising visual relations. Materialized in concrete and massive oak, the kitchen is both a structural element and a spatial piece of furniture.
The entrance receives a sober overhaul and a modest wardrobe in order to clean up the previous spatial Situation.
On the upper floor the house is slightly extended and the rooms’ layout completely reconfigured. Across from the stair a new dormer containing two bathrooms is added.
This divides the floor plan into two sections dedicated to the bedrooms. The southern section contains the spacious master bedroom and one of the childrens’ bedrooms.
The master bedroom has direct access to the smaller of the two bathrooms.
The slimmer northern section contains the so called twin room which is divided in two sub-spaces.
A large sliding door and a habitable window allow to gradually regulate the connection between the spaces.
The house before...
... and after the transformation.
In order to enhance the energetic performance of the building several measures have been taken. A new layer of insulation is applied to the existing exterior walls which is then covered by a horizontal wooden cladding.
In order not to compromise the view and the incidence of light, the new wooden embrasures for the existing windows receive a characteristic conical shape.
The gaps in the cladding are kept wide so depending on the point of view the underlying construction appears. The resulting effect of depth and the textile character of the facade create an elegant materiality. The wood is finished with a multiple layer linseed oil treatment. Depending on the incidence of light and the time of day, the treatment picks up the ambient light and thereby generates a lively appearance.
