SAOTA BRINGS CONTEMPORARY DESIGN TO PARK-LIKE SETTING IN BELGIUM
World renowned South African architectural firm , SAOTA , recently completed a beautiful home for a client in Belgium . This house on a large , wooded lot in the Flanders region offered SAOTA an opportunity to design a distinctive contemporary architectural object in the landscape that would simultaneously serve as a warm , outward-looking living environment and engage meaningfully with its surroundings .
The principal components of the master plan include a main house above a basement parking garage and a separate pool pavilion with a home office . The house and pavilion are linked via landscaped courtyards , a structured system of koi ponds and a swimming pool .
The exterior design is composed of solid cubes and interconnecting glazed voids , which are unified with a slender canopy that wraps around three sides to form outdoor terraces . Clustered vertical columns double as sculptural screens .
The façade design is an expression of the interior layout . The client ’ s preference for traditional , defined rooms rather than an open-plan arrangement led to cellular interior spaces that open outwards onto the terraces and inwards towards a doublevolume central atrium with skylights .
The house responds to the local climate by fostering an indoor-outdoor lifestyle in summer , and an introverted , cosy environment centring on the atrium in winter . The way in which
PHOTOGRAPHY : ADAM LETCH
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