House in the Outskirts of Brussels design by Samyn and Partners

Architects: Samyn and Partners Location: Brussels Photography: Andrès Fernandez Marcos for Scale model, Marie-Françoise Plissart for Completed project

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 five children’s rooms and sanitary installations. They are equipped with a mezzanine protected by textile netting that will lead to the glassed-wall facade. The house presents curved and vegetalised facades that are very private and closed to the neighbours to the north, the east and the south. In contrast, the west facade 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 copper roof, the vegetalised facade is finally composed of a selection of exotic plants chosen by the botanical artist Patrick Blanc, and extends to cover the roof. Samyn and partners 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 fertilisation systems for the plants that are set into a felt support stapled to rigid PVC panels.

Source: Samyn and Partners

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