House William
House William consists of the large-scale renovation and complete transformation of a typical Brussels 1920s mansion. The new owners are an artist couple and their children. The house wants to be open to friends and artistic projects (happenings, vernissages, lectures…). As such, while the daily comfort of the family is of course paramount, we immediately sought a spatial organization that could break free from the classical ‘lounge-living-kitchen’ destination, and allow other uses and publics, once in a while.
The frontward has been faithfully renovated, and preserves a very classic aspect, while on the inside, everything - or almost everything - has been shaken up and changed. In its original state, the house has got a garden situated half a storey below the street. This garden has a direct link with the cellar floor, while the ground floor (as is often the case in this kind of houses) lies half a storey above the street, and therefore one storey above the garden. The project wants to establish a link between the garden and the living rooms, rather than the cellars. The cellars' ceiling is destroyed, and we are confronted with a big double volume (almost 7 m under the ceiling) in the entire backside of the house, that will be reorganized with internal volumes, slightly sculptural cavity inserts, and an interplay of double heights that generate new relationships. In the vestibule of the house, we have lowered the stairs towards the former cellars, and eliminated the ones that went up to the noble floor. The array of selected materials and hues is willingly limited, cold and luminous. The upper floors, with the rooms, have been redesigned, too, but the original constellation has been preserved to a higher degree. The back façade has been entirely revised and put together again, but always serving the purpose of conserving the volumes. These rearward volumes are clad with zinc, the layout of which is in harmony with the play of the new bay windows. This skin in zinc hides the fixed wooden frameworks of the new external carpentry.
Ingénieur stabilité : JZH & Partners
PEB : JZH & Partners
Entreprise générale : Bati Nova sprl
Toiture et façade zinc : Active Toit
Photographies : Olivier Cornil
Client : privé
Budget : non communiqué
