HOUSE FOR FRIENDS
Conversion of an old farmhouse in Flanders into a lively residence for the client and her friends. The historical complex sits isolated in the flat, wide and windy flemish countryside: it comprises a house, a stable and a barn laying at the perimeter of a walled courtyard. Outside, orchards and fields.
All the buildings of this compound are tipically made of bricks, directly constructed -or better, floating- on the wet clayish soil.
The project focused on joining house and stable together underneath a long roof. The courtyard is now a protected environment. A wintergarten and covered entrance mediates between the broad outer landscape and the court.
The main volume was brought back to its original proportions, prior the last interventions, and a tower was added on the rear of the house, thus expanding the otherwise cramped interiors with a living room and a bedroom.
A generous double-high dinig room is the heart of this new house, equipped with a big table for friendly gatherings and with a fireplace for long night talks.
Structurally, all the loads of the roof are beared by a row of timber columns, as slender as 16 cm thick and 6 m high, which give a ryhthm to the whole elongated construction. The fragile, brittely brick walls were reinforced from the inside, freed from any load bearing function and thermally isolated.
All materials were chosen consistently with the flemish historical surroundings and among the local natural materials available: bricks, chalk, chesnut-timber.
