Living and working in your own garden

In 2008, l’Escaut completed an individual house project of Nathalie and Laurence. The presented housing design aimed to sensitively react to the explicit greenery of the residential housing block back gardens in Uccle. Proposing an additional volume with generous openings toward the garden was the starting point of the project. Whereas eventually, the elemental building massing and larch cladding made it look more like a comfortable hut than a townhouse.

A few years later, Nathalie, who works as a graphic designer, asked l’Escaut to create a workshop space in the courtyard, where she could fulfill her dream of “working in her own garden”.

Waterline

The design of this new living space integrated in the garden and in the interior of the housing block immediately arised as an issue.

Shifting between the ideas of total patchwork in the style of the Hobbit house and the new independent volume in the plot, the design was finally guided toward the search for an ideal "waterline". The concept was followed by almost military precision of the underground volume measures, the study of daylight and testing the views, essential for creating a pleasant space. In the end, this waterline concept was successfully realized by a volume whose 2/3 parts of it were dug under the ground.

In between a smooth green slope and the cuboid shape workshop building, there comes an element, which you can imagine to be a small English type courtyard with the stairs, comfortable to sit on. The end of the building towards this court fully opens, providing an access point and opportunity for generous light and garden views.

Seen from the house, the workshop is not anything else than a small part of the garden that would have been extruded, with a green roof snatched from the ground grass. The plants constituting the latter were chosen precisely in this sense among some varieties of herbaceous and grasses to resemble as closely as possible to the prairie grass and thus reinforce this perception of nature.

The roof whose level is uncommonly lower than eye level, becomes a true fifth façade, as the real function is also betrayed by the presence of a hidden glass opening among the grasses.

This Zenithal opening gives additional light for the back of the interior space and creates a spectacular view toward the hornbeam hedge.

The younger sister

In a similar rectangular massing as the residential house, just in a smaller scale, the workshop could become de facto its "younger sister." Assuming the dialogue to be completely inevitable, the materials are chosen in a strict cohesion. Therefore, an entirely analogous cladding is used (similar in wood type, treatment, dimensions and spacing of the blades) as well as the same type fabrication aluminum profiles to cover the workshop.

It is only the different colour tones of the cladding, whose ageing and turning to grey was a desired part of the concept, reveal the different construction dates. In a few years, we can easily imagine that the two volumes were built simultaneously. The continuity can also be noticed in regards to the raw concrete used for both access to the second floor of the house and for the access to the workshop. A large terrace made of larch subtly seals the spaces inhabited by family in old and new constructions by connecting them physically.

On the other hand, this mimetic relationship fades in the interior of the site, where the cladding pine panels are clearly present on the walls, meanwhile roughly sawn oak ceiling and flooring elements wrap everything up into a warm cocoon. A created atmosphere is so unique that one can imagine that it facilitates the mental transition from domestic space to the workplace. It gives you a chance to work in your own garden and be elsewhere…