In architecture, we find that building this complex relationship with landscape views can generate emotional depth within interior space, offering orientation, calm, and continuity beyond the self. The frame is not a picture, it is a daily calibration of distance, fragility, and presence. We are known for creating emotive frames to enter the worlds of our building projects. In a grey brick house in Flanders, a protective shell becomes a frame and pathway into a rural landscape, where the house is both a destination and a starting point. It is a gateway from the speed of modernity that turns its back on the road; and an aperture guiding its inhabitants towards light and nature.
We set out to create a journey between contrasting worlds from street into nature, the shifting sequences not only frame, but also draw inhabitants into the topography, which drifts down towards a river bend to a backdrop of rolling fields. This sense of movement heightens our awareness of nature’s precious fragility, a feeling that first inspired Flemish landscape in the 16th century.
A small solid cast concrete model became both a physical and conceptual anchor to help us find the right expression for the house within this journey between worlds. The dense, monolithic object clarified ideas of weight and voids, compacting the house into an excavated geological fragment. It helped us understand the architecture not as a collection of rooms, but as a functional presence in the landscape.
On approaching the house, which sits behind dense planting, entry is not immediately obvious. With a single window on this front facade, it is discrete and enclosed, hiding the extent of its vast plot. A side access leads down a sculpted corridor to a terrace and the garden beyond, and, behind a heavy door, another world unfolds.
From the double height hallway lit by a skylight, step by step, new experiences of space open up. Strong materials include the exposed grey brick walls with flush grouting, polished concrete, and black-stained Poplar wood floors. An internal courtyard sheltering a tree separates the more enclosed garage and private office at the front of the house.
Volumes become increasingly open, shifting into a double-height living space with an eight-meter-high window shaded by a canopy. Outside an overflow pool absorbs and reflects dappled light back into the space. Furniture leans into the material honesty of solid wood, natural textiles, leather, stone, and patinated metals, while art favours abstract presence and earthy palettes, allowing silence and negative space to remain active.