Project: House in the Outskirts of Brussels
Architects: SAMYN and Partners
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Area: 6,027 sf
Photographs by: Courtesy of SAMYN and Partners
House in the Outskirts of Brussels by SAMYN and Partners
SAMYN and Partners have designed a house in the outskirts of Brussels with a very intricate exterior design. This 6,000 square foot modern home is wrapped in a living façade which create private spaces on the inside and a very gaze-stealing exterior on the outside.
This house for an artist includes the street level of an existing small house. It now houses the entry hall, a family room and a kitchen; the living-room and the stairway are in the extension to the building.
The second floor includes the master bedroom with its bathroom, as well as the children’s rooms and sanitary installations. They are equipped with a mezzanine protected by textile netting that will lead to the glassed-wall façade.
The house presents curved and vegetalised facades that are very private and closed to the neighbors to the north, the east and the south. In contrast, the west façade is entirely glass-walled as if it were one huge partitioned window.
It is planned that Immense translucid white polyester curtains in widths of 1.6 m suspended from the top of the structure to the ground floor would run along this great « window » to ensure shade in the summer months.
Initially conceived as a wall of ivy with a patinated cop- per roof, the vegetalised façade is finally composed of a selection of exotic plants chosen by the botanical artist Patrick Blanc, and extends to cover the roof.
We had to design the structure, the insulation, and the water-tightness of the envelope and resolve the building physics issues in order to receive the necessary support systems, irrigation and fertilization systems for the plants that are set into a felt support stapled to rigid PVC panels.
