Atlas House
The Atlas House is situated on the edge of the city of Eindhoven, opposite a historic rural estate. The compact square building manifests itself as a tower. It is rotated 45 degrees relative to the street and is detached from the boundaries of the plot. All windows are grouped around the corners and at times allow for diagonal views through the volume. Internally, the rotation provides striking vistas along the edges of the forest. The depth of the façade openings reveals that the size and colour of the bricks is the same both inside and outside. These define the character of the raw and restrained interior. The external facades offer no clues about the playful offsets of the internal spaces. The interior reveals a collection of rooms of various heights and floor levels, each giving their respective window openings specific characteristics.
On this modest plot size, a spacious residence had to be combined with the clients wish for a garden. Therefore, the footprint of the house is minimized within the given building height, resulting in a vertically organized program. Due to the proximity of the houses in the neighbourhood, the amount of privacy in the garden is limited. Hence, the tower-like structure offers a roof terrace with maximum privacy where one can dwell between the treetops.
The Atlas House is built with large types of red bricks, both inside and outside. For the facades, a striking brushed form of pointing is used, creating a strong graphical pattern. Across the volume, the facades contain decorations that refer to the Dutch Neo-Renaissance tradition of enriching ordinary brickwork with plaster, suggesting architectural elements like keystones and tympans. The upper part of the building is finished with a light-colored layer of cement, distinguishing the classical plinth from the more lightweight top. The slightly lifted corners of the roof further emphasize this theme, bringing Atlas to mind, the Greek mythological figure that carries the sky on his shoulders for eternity.
