Case MOER
Seeing and being seen
A large wooded area in second building line in Bruges was the starting point for this project.
The search for which building and which atmosphere best captured that beautiful setting, sent Pieter-Jan Leenknecht of CAS Architects to the drawing board. In the end, a cruciform plan with a twist brought solace.
Pieter-Jan took inspiration from Fallingwater, an iconic project with a similar plan by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed a villa in Pennsylvania with a waterfall running underneath. “It comes down to having a central axis that fans out to different wings. Especially for a project in second building line and in a green area, that is a rewarding form. This is because it ensures that you have interesting views from everywhere in the house and feel a strong connection with the natural context in which you live. Given that second building line, privacy weighs less and the house does not need to have a pronounced front or back. Here, you enter through a patio that is part of the garden and gives you a view of another part of that garden through the house.”
So the project also questions the legibility of a property. Certainly in second building lines, a logical approach where everything is immediately clear does not have to be immediately obvious. Then, as here, you can provide an east-facing kitchen, a terrace that catches the evening sun and a swimming pool that is basically in your front garden but at the ideal orientation. That’s the exercise CAS did for each space and that’s how the wings were filled in. With the kitchen as a kind of loose altar in the space and a sports room on the ground floor, close to the entrance but detached from the rest, connected to the basement floor via an open space. Thanks to a large glass area, both floors enjoy views of nature.
An additional advantage of the special cross shape is that the axes of both wings create fully-fledged garden rooms that can be oriented according to the most interesting light. “In this way, you create extra dimensions to your garden that provide beautiful views and add value. What is even more unique about this project is that on top of the cross shape, which we keep very pure with materials such as glass and wood extending to the eaves, we have placed a horizontal disc as a roof with a very rectilinear shape. Specifically to reconcile the cross with covered spaces and remain honest with the concept and architecture.”
To preserve nature as much as possible, the site was screened in advance to make sure the valuable trees were preserved and only a minimum of trees had to be uprooted. This way, they were able to plant the house as if it had been there for much longer. The result is an extremely liveable home that looks very simple. “Yet it was quite a complex story to construct it the same way. It looks like a large ground floor, but because of those narrow bays, it is in fact not. The experience there was crucial and we were able to achieve that by integrating the basement floor on the one hand and the small volume on the first floor that houses two bedrooms on the other hand. Both floors, however comfortable, were secondary to the cross-shaped ground floor. After all, that provides the experience in this all-sided house where the atmosphere is determined by the symbiosis between architecture and the greenery present.”
