Project: House VDV
Architects: Graux & Baeyens Architects
Location: Destelbergen, Belgium
Area: 5,166 sf
Photographs by: Filip Dujardin
House VDV by Graux & Baeyens Architects
House VDV is a stunning modern residence designed on a historic plot in the town of Destelbergen, near Ghent in Belgium. The place it sits on was actually occupied by a castle that got destroyed during WWII.
Graux & Baeyens Architects have given it new life with a brand new, modern home that references the traditional barn-like buildings of the area.
This single family house is locatedjust outside the town of Ghent. The plot is part of a domain where us to be a castle destroyed in WWII. Parts of the surrounding wall is still standing and is a silent reminder of this history.
House VDV appears simultaneously familiar and strange. The volume, consisting of one level with a pitched roof, alludes to familiar archetypes such as the rural homestead or barn. But at the same time the volume is broken up by large glass facades, so that the relationship is established with the surrounding trees and the listed castle wall.
The mandatory implantation in the back of the plot ensures that the house is conceived as a pavilion. A garden-house with no front or rear, but with two identical facades and a 360 degree experience of the entire plot.
The (non-treated copper) cladding gives the project a poetic impermanence, which is echoed in the reflection of the surrounding trees in the glass facades.
