Single-family house
The request consisted in the construction of a new dwelling in the urban context. The client profile was particular – a retired couple who wanted to come back to live in Brussels. A very restricted budget, with the desire of an architecture with a low global energy impact, took the different architecture's considerations to a construction focused in the economy of the construction process. The premise was that this economy in the construction process answered to a choice of a sustainable and ecological building.
The achievement of this project of a private dwelling was a research laboratory for us, the architects of the project. From the economics point of view, we tried to verify if it was possible to construct in 2019, a private single-family house with a budget around 1100€ /m² ex-Tax all-inclusive (structure, finish, furniture). From the ecological point of view, we wanted to verify that an economic construction system could answer to the normative criteria for the energy performance standards and for the global ecological impact of the construction. We also wanted to verify that favouring 'simple' construction methods and techniques, far from advance technologies, could be for us, the base for a sustainable, quality and reasonable architecture.
