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Architects: Powerhouse Company
- Area: 240 m²
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Ossip van Duivenbode
Text description provided by the architects. Villa CG is a family home in the eastern Dutch city of Enschede, close to the German border. The villa is located at the Museumlaan, a new, particularly special avenue reserved for designs by architects of national and international standing including Erick van Egeraat. The clients, a couple with two children, commissioned Powerhouse Company in 2013 to design ‘the most beautiful house on the street’ within a strict budget.
Villa CG is a two-storey home characterized by horizontality. Our design takes its cues from the surrounding low hedge to create a house that is about balance and equilibrium, symmetry and grace.
From the street, the house presents itself as a simple cube, clad in an unusually long, thin brick and divided vertically by a wide cantilevered first floor slab. The front elevation is designed to be private and closed, with only a single opening for the entrance. The slab shallows the height of the building, its severity and roots it into the flatness of the context.
At ground level, the underside of the slab is glazed at either end of the core to form two window bays containing the kitchen/dining room and study/guestroom. The glazing wraps around the back to give views over every aspect of the garden from the house. Inside, the exterior darkness of the bricks combine beautifully with American walnut veneer fittings. The first floor, however, is the reverse – closed on three sides for an efficient use of openings.
The materials used in Villa CG are timeless and of a very high quality. The long, slim bricks give the cube a delicate and elegant level of detail. The color of the brick was selected very carefully in combination with the wood veneer of the interior. This, in combination with the translucent door that separates the entrance hall from the living room, the sand colored Earthcote wall cladding, light grey polyurethane floor and a variety of woods make the house appear dynamic yet harmonious.
