2011
House Rot Ellen Berg - Oudenaarde - Belgium

In many works the architects have shown greatly the capacity to transform an old building without trying to overpowering its primary identity.
With a great economy of means, within existing walls, the architects realized a house inside the house.
The whole construction system contains the idea of using the building components as elements of an assembly. As the architects specify, they were interested in defining a sort of Meccano, to facilitate the assemblage of the house.
Consequently they adopted a prefabricated system used to construct cement formwork, together with another system, also prefabricated, used to build hothouses, and they adapted to the needs of the context.
They looked for a system compatible with the mechanisms of self-construction since the budget for the interior was around 70,000 €. The intention was of using what they found on site: since Melden is the typical flemish village of brick houses, they maintained the memory of brick.
They combined two materials, to the old bricks they added shingles and the facades reveals this additions of the new project through the change of material.
Everything shows the presence of a precarious equilibrium that pushes us questioning the way it was built.

[project selected by Ester Elena Galli]

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Architecture as Resource / Imprint