House on stilt - Almere House | Almere,Netherlands | Benthem Crouwel

House, Almere
The house was designed for an ‘unusual homes’ competition held by De Fantasie in Almere. The brief was to design a house without taking into account current building regulations. All prize-winners were awarded a plot of land on loan for five years. This meant that the house and its foundations had to be easy to dismantle. In the compact house, the living room is bounded on three sides by glass sheets to gather the surrounding landscape into the house. Sandwich panel walls enclose the private zone comprising the two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom. The extraordinary construction of the house combats wind pressure in three ways. The space-frame floor structure is attached to a foundation of concrete slabs, stabilizing fins are placed strategically at the seams of the toughened glass sheets and finally two steel tension cables secure the lightweight profiled steel roof borne aloft by the glazing.

Client
Family J. Benthem
Architect
Benthem Crouwel Architekten
Gross floor area
65 m²
Start design
1982
Start construction
1982
Completion
1984

benthem crouwel website

House on stilt - Almere House | Almere,Netherlands | Benthem Crouwel

House, Almere
The house was designed for an ‘unusual homes’ competition held by De Fantasie in Almere. The brief was to design a house without taking into account current building regulations. All prize-winners were awarded a plot of land on loan for five years. This meant that the house and its foundations had to be easy to dismantle. In the compact house, the living room is bounded on three sides by glass sheets to gather the surrounding landscape into the house. Sandwich panel walls enclose the private zone comprising the two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom. The extraordinary construction of the house combats wind pressure in three ways. The space-frame floor structure is attached to a foundation of concrete slabs, stabilizing fins are placed strategically at the seams of the toughened glass sheets and finally two steel tension cables secure the lightweight profiled steel roof borne aloft by the glazing.
Client
Family J. Benthem
Architect
Benthem Crouwel Architekten
Gross floor area
65 m²
Start design
1982
Start construction
1982
Completion
1984

benthem crouwel website

Minimalist House Design | Breda,Iowa | Benthem Crouwel

House, Breda
With its flat roof and single level, this house makes a modernist statement in an up-market residential area of mainly standard fare with pitched roofs. Lifted into space, its volume keeps close to the building line on the street to leave as much garden space as possible in the southwest. Both front and rear entrances are set back; the roof plane continues without a break. A bridge at the streetside entrance and a raised patio and terrace in the garden stitch together inside and outside, creating a long visual and physical corridor through the property.
Square in plan, the house has a cruciform infill of an open and a closed zone that cross at its heart. In the closed zone are the bathrooms, toilets, cloakroom and garage. The hermetic side walls have horizontal profile aluminium cladding; facades in the open zone are fully glazed. Four bedrooms cum workrooms stand along the entrance side, with the living and kitchen/diner overlooking the garden. Glazed slits and light courts punctuate the concrete vegetated roof.

Client
Family Van Krimpen
Architect
Benthem Crouwel Architekten
Gross floor area
250 m²
Start design
2003
Start construction
2003
Completion
2004

Text and images from Benthem Crouwel