House Rot Ellen Berg / architecten de vylder vinck taillieu

Architects: architecten de vylder vinck taillieu – Jan De Vylder, Inge Vinck, Jo Taillieu
Location: O., Belgium
Design Team: Jan De Vylder, Inge Vinck, Jo Taillieu, Sebastian Skovsted, Olivier Goethals
Structural Engineering: Arthur De Roover structureel ontwerp, Gent
Area: 182 sqm
Completion: 2011
Photographs: Filip Dujardin

Piet and Ellen buy a house. A serious house. At the foot of the Koppenberg. Rotelenberg. Rot Ellen Berg. Ellen and Piet have been working on the house. For four years now. Themselves. Slowly. But better than otherwise.

Getting it right; thought-out.

Building with Piet and Ellen is a conversation. An awareness of how things are. So after four years it really does look quite different from before; or than expected in the first year.

Then we were held up for months by those mirror oriel windows. First by how to make them. And then by looking at them. And looking at them again.

Mirror.

Or how a strictly constructional element reflects itself. The arch abutment and the oriel window.

Behind the mirror is what cannot be seen. In the mirror, what is not there can be seen.

Tile.

Behind the tile is what cannot be seen. On the tile, what is not there can be seen.

The mirror traces the reality in front of it. Through the drawing.

How Piet and Ellen went back to playing with MECANNO. Yellow girders and silver columns. White glass and black rubber strips.

A house in a house. Separate from a house.

A house that aims to handle in a completely different way what we all have to be so assiduous about these days: sustainability.

Sustainable is how we live differently in the summer. And in the winter.

Sustainable is a place where we want to live. Simplicity.

back elevation

Piet and Ellen are doing it themselves. They are doing it themselves. They have to do it themselves. The clients did it themselves. Everything. Economy. And challenge us. And yet, poetry.

The house will be a project of precise decisions. Decisions that constantly, again and again, impose the utmost precision and sharpness. Decisions that match up in the overall context.