Reshaping everyday life: the extension of an ordinary Belgian house

A simple, repetitive, even banal suburban landscape is the context in which studio B-bis architecten worked for the House VS project. We are in Ganshoren, a Flemish municipality of 20,000 inhabitants in the Brussels metropolitan area, characterised by an urban fabric made up mostly of austere row houses, with a few ungainly tall buildings and punctuated by a few bizarre constructions which could be published on the blog Ugly Belgian Houses.

B-bis architecten’s project is an extension of a super-normal residence with white-painted brick exterior walls and two pitched roofs covered with classic red tiles, with different heights and angles. The Belgian studio works from these two simple characteristics to affirm the contemporary nature of their project. The new volume is minimal, completely covered with wood and has asymmetrical pitches, creating an interesting geometric composition with the other roofs. The project is divided into two levels: on the garden level we find the new kitchen, connected with the new extension and the open spaces. On the lower, basement level, there is a room for guests or used as a work space. B-bis architecten renews that “blend of everyday life” defined by architectural historian Véronique Patteeuw, with a new contemporary addition to the garden of a typically Belgian house.