Description

This architect’s private house is strongly inspired by Pierre Charreau’s glass house in Paris. It is situated on a traditional 6-m-wide plot, where it benefits from a very low neighbour on the south side, towards which the house has openings. The building is composed according to Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Architecture: construction on pilotis (here, only the south column), roof garden, horizontal windows, and free plan and façades. The ground floor is divided in two bays: one providing a ramp leading to a basement garage, the other showing a carriageway leading to the garden and the entrance. It opens into a hall with sanitary facilities, the staircase, a kitchen, and a dumbwaiter. The first and second floors are treated as a duplex that opens to the street through a large double-height bay lined with a balcony. The first floor accommodates a dining room to the rear and a living room in the double height. On the second floor, there is a study on the mezzanine, separated by a movable partition from a bedroom and its adjoining bathroom. The third floor is divided equally between a solarium on the street side and three small rooms: two bedrooms and an office. The interior is sober and decorated with materials such as terrazzo and black-and-white mosaics. The white façades are perforated with large rectangular bays: these are entirely open in the solarium; alternating clear glass panels and glass bricks on the street façade; and showing an entire glass-brick façade to the back, interrupted on each floor by a horizontal band of clear glass.

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Originally published in: Gérald Ledent, Alessandro Porotto, Brussels Housing. Atlas of Residential Building Types, Birkhäuser, 2023.