Jan Lefevere, of KAAI7 studio, has breathed new life into a 1962 townhouse in the city centre, originally used as a dental practice but long since disused. To rescue the building from demolition, was a project aimed at enhancing its Brutalist character, legible in the material texture of the exposed brick façade, in the exposed structures alternating reinforced concrete slabs with steel girders supporting floor slabs.

The project involved the renovation of the building and an extension at the rear, towards the garden.

The central point of the design was to ensure an excellent intake of natural light in the house, which had been suffocated over the years by the volumes of the surrounding buildings. To this purpose, the concrete reinforced concrete slab above the kitchen and living area was pierced by a vertiginous circular hole that interconnects the two levels of the new double volume, introducing light into the depths and giving the spaces an unusually playful character.

With philological meticulousness, the studio intended to unleash the building's rough and rugged aura, bringing into view the original unfinished materials (from the reinforced concrete structures cast in wooden formworks to the Lumax glass blocks, attributed to Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand) and preserving the valuable elements (the staircase, the sanitary fixtures, the lighting and the wooden panelling of the furniture).

A lively interplay of contrasts animates the premises: soft, inviting furnishings dialogue with bare, rough wooden elements with an almost monastic feel, while cheerful two-tone brushstrokes dilute the austerity of the rooms: bright blue in the floors, curtains and windows of the front façade, antique pink in the structural steel elements and in the windows of the rear façade.