ALMERE – BE-TWEN

International architecture competition.
Data: Single family house in the wood. Housing type flexible for different clients, environmentally self sustainable.
Budget: 150.000 euros.
Client: CASLA & Comité ‘De Fantasie’.
Location: Almere, the Netherlands.
Design: 2006

Building a single family house with a low budget in a forest, yet, offering a contemporary life style to the inhabitants, comfort, privacy and space quality.
Our strategy is based on the combination of two very simple concepts and technologies: a traditional durable brick house and a glass house. These two are combined and reinterpreted in a way that will offer practical use of the spaces, privacy and communal life, as well as a new material perception of a traditional Dutch building technology: the brick construction.
The house is divided in two volumes. The separation of the two bands allows the definition of two functional domains that live from the interaction with each other. The space in between hosts a winter garden which becomes a connector, not only for flows, but for activities, giving the possibility to improve the inhabitable space of the house, without the costs coming from building a third functional band.
We believe that the winter garden becomes a secret gift to the owners of the house, additional space that can host the personal desires of every inhabitant, old or young. At the same time it is a tool that unables the designers to adapt the scheme to different potential clients that would be interested in investing in this house.
The connector is the space that gives logic to every functional scenario: a couple, a family with children, a single worker, two housemates.
All these potential clients could benefit by a configuration of the scheme that, every time would fit their requirements and still offer an exciting unique space.