Villa CG

Open and Closed

“Design the most beautiful house on the street,” said our clients for Villa CG. A tall order, perhaps, as the neighbors are all one-off villas created for private clients by prominent offices like SeARCH, Bolles + Wilson and Erick van Egeraat, but at Powerhouse Company we can never resist a challenge. Our design lives up to its owners’ ambitions by relying on perfect symmetry and a delicate balance between closed and open volumes.

BudgetConfidential
Time span2013 - 2016
Size243 m²
StatusCompleted
LocationEnschede, NL
TypeInteriors, Living
Client
Confidential
Partners in charge
Stijn Kemper, Nanne de Ru
Project team
Ryanne Janssen
Stefan de Meijer
Donna van Milligen Bielke
Structural and Geotechnical Engineer

We achieved a richness in spatial experiences within the simplicity of the shapes and materials.

Stijn Kemper

Brick
by Brick

The front entrance with customized door

Brick
by Brick

By framing a solid brick cube between two diaphanous glass wings and sheltering all three volumes beneath a white canopy, we create an unexpectedly high-contrast, yet harmonious, visual experience.

We realized our villa’s closed front façade in beautiful long and narrow Wasserstrich bricks, their color carefully chosen to harmonize with the walnut wood of the interior. This brick cube shields the inhabitants from the street and is flanked by transparent and frameless glass bays, anticipating the openness of the rear sgarden side of the house. A white stucco canopy, supported by slender columns, unifies the design, adds to the horizontal dynamic and creates an intermediate zone that blurs indoors and outdoors. From the street, attention focuses on the customized front door, with its strong geometric design in tombac.

Rooms and Views

The kitchen occupies one of the glass wings
A structural glass facade optimises living room views
The other transparent wing houses the study
Extending over the terrace is the white canopy
01 - 04

Ground Floor

First Floor

Site Plan

1/3

Garden Delights

The canopy accentuates the villa’s horizontality
The living room overlooks the garden
A transparent rear facade
01 - 03

In the Zone

View of the rear terrace with glass facade, canopy and garden

In the Zone

The white canopy extends out further at the rear of the villa, matching the footprint of the surrounding terrace and, together with the structural glass facade, creating an intermediate zone that enables the living room, terrace and garden to spatially flow into each other. The effect is heightened by the garden encroaching on the terrace beneath the overhang, softening the edges that define them.

A circular skylight at the top of the stairs

The materialization reinforces the play with sight lines, openness and seclusion.

Stijn Kemper
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