Only a twenty-minute bike-ride from the city centre of Groningen and with a stunning view over the lake of Meerstad, this house became a couple’s private harbour to grow old in.
Made in the simple shape of a cuboid, enhanced with steel trusses and clad with clay tiles, this private house is a beacon of stability, durability and simplistic beauty.
The owners had their private harbour built at the shore of a high-quality rainwater lake not far from the city of Groningen in the northern part of The Netherlands. However, the home is also situated near the Groningen Field, a natural gas site responsible for numerous earthquakes in recent years. As a result, the house had to be earthquake-resistant, from its foundation to its exterior cladding.
The floor plan is designed for two people. All living areas are situated on the ground floor and have a direct connection to the garden, while the upper floor is used as an office and a music room. A long cuboid shapes the floorplan with extensions creating further space. Three sliding doors allow the façade to be fully opened to the garden, merging the house with the landscape.
“Building earthquake-proof houses usually means planning smaller windows, but that was not an option for the client,” the architects say. In close collaboration with a structural engineering team, the architects managed to design a house around a steel structure combined with a prefabricated timber frame so that they could add lake-facing windows to every room. At the backside towards the street, they closed the façade to increase privacy and stability.
“During an earthquake, tile cladding is very flexible and forgiving,” explain the architects. The client chose a warm brown-red hue for the tiles, which fits the colour scheme of the region. The architects designed the whole building to appear as one monolithic volume. “The size and simple shape of the Vauban tile made it a great match for the wood cladding as it is distinctive but does not overwhelm the other materials,” say the architects.
As an energy-efficient addition, they integrated the photovoltaic GSE IN-ROOF SYSTEM into the ridge line. This created an elegant, uniform appearance but also proved compatible with the architect’s choice of roof windows. Today, the house is slowly settling into its surroundings, the tiles blending in with the nature around. The house is very low in energy usage as well as maintenance, as the client has allowed the façade to grow a patina of small lichen and moss over the years.
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