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Architects: PLNLstudio
- Area: 180 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Riccardo De Vecchi
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Manufacturers: Efapel / electrical equipment, Windows, Xella, Ytong
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Lead Architects: Magda Sakowicz
Text description provided by the architects. NL Home is a house and personal sandbox. It is designed as a series of work-in-progress spaces to work, play and experiment. It is located in the heart of the old part of Rotterdam, close to the city center surrounded by old buildings from the early 19th century. This is a house with a story to tell. Removing all the layers accumulated over the years and restoring the original materials gave a nod to the house's past and defined the character of the interior.
Since the house was built over a hundred years ago, one of the challenges was to adapt the interior layout to today's needs. Previously on the ground floor, there was an unheated garage with a workshop and two separate, tiny flats on the upper levels. Was chosen to combine the upper levels into one family house and convert the ground floor garage into a multifunctional neighborhood community space. The floor plan is designed as a flexible adaptable open space, with all the necessary installations to accommodate different types of interior layouts and, if required in the future, convert it into a separate flat.
On the first floor, there is a kitchen with a dining room designed with the possibility of swapping places. On the second floor are two bedrooms with a central bathroom and a large walk-in closet. When the house was purchased, its original brick front facade was in very good condition, therefore no intervention was needed other than to insulate the walls from the inside to improve the energy performance. However, the rest of the house was in a poor state, requiring substantial intervention including repairing leaks, leveling floors, and dismantling of decayed parts that were no longer serviceable in any way. Everything that was usable was repurposed, so, for instance, the floor on the ground floor was built from materials dismantled from the upper floors.
A new extension on the ground and first floor continues the main house's philosophies regarding the choice of materials and method of construction. The external walls were built as masonry walls and the floor/ceiling construction is using wooden beams. Reinforcements of the existing structure, i.e.the colorfully painted steel beams and columns act as a time marker between the old and new parts of the house.
To fit within the budget and to ensure that the house would be completed within a maximum of six months, it was decided to choose monolithic cellular concrete blocks as the material for the single-skin external walls. The rear facade has been rendered in a reddish color with a grainy texture to give it a subtle texture and blends in well with the surrounding buildings.
To fill the interior with natural light, large windows were placed on the north side and skylights were installed in the new extension. Large oak and triple-glazed windows also provide excellent thermal performance, and insulating the roof from the outside allowed the roof structure on the top floor to be exposed.
