House Bierings By Rocha Tombal Architecten

From a basic form, defined by the municipal urban plan, sculptural “eyes” emerge with direct views to the varied countryside landscape. The form and orientation of the building avoid visual contact with the adjacent houses: at the ground floor the angled ceiling of the kitchen accentuates the intensive contact with the garden. On the first floor, the different shaped openings in the roof and façade offer, like “fingers of light”, varied daylight experiences. The routing through the house starts in the hall, a section of the ground floor volume. After experiencing the entrance area and passing the gigantic pivoted door, the visitor arrives at the “heart of the house”, the kitchen. Here he looks through the big glass wall straight into the garden, which suggests being outside again. Behind him, the stair cuts a wooden wall inviting to follow the route towards the first floor. Its angled form and extreme proportions (small and high) and the daylight entering from the ceiling, offer the feeling of walking in a medieval street.
At the end of it he discovers the living room, a quiet, north-lighted attic space, from which a big opening exposes the surrounding green like in a framed painting......more

House Boers Ponssen | Rocha Tombal | Dordrecht, Netherlands

The wooden curtain, created by a varied three-dimensional vertical pattern, is closed to the street and neighbourhood side. To the water and forest side it opens totally allowing an intensive symbiosis between living room and outside nature. The form of the upper volume, the sleeping area, accentuates the orientation towards the water and nature.
There’s a present holyday atmosphere in this house lying on a wooden “blanket” above the water.

Client: Fam. Boers Ponssen
Realisation: 2007-2008
Architect:Rocha Tombal

House In IJburg,Amsterdam | Rocha Tombal

House IJburg
Client: Fam. Winkel Molenaar
Design: 2006-2007
Realisation: 2008

The closed façade offers a “statement” by reacting on its neighbours by contrast.
Only on the ground floor is the white volume cut off. At this point the front facade is pushed backwards, like a scenario, allowing the perception of the stair.
Behind the closed façade a “light-route” is created: after experiencing exposure and light intensity on the ground-floor, the visitor gets on the first-floor the feeling of stepping into an enclosed darker staircase. Through it’s form, which at some points is cut off to allow light penetration, and the contrast between fully open and fully closed, a light-game arises, which floor after floor guides and surprises. At the end of the route, via one sharp roof opening, the visitor feels again the confrontation with an intensive bath of light.
The stair climbs through the whole house next to a facility’s unit which on the ground floor separates the transparent hall from the intimate living room, and in the other floors, the circulation area from the sleeping / working rooms. By situating both staircase and facility’s unit directly behind the front façade, these spaces become flexible, less deep and bright. The windows of the back façade which in each room are different in form and size offer to every space a different light quality.
In the void of the living room, the sculptural fire-place connects the ground floor with the first floor.
In this way, and embraced by light, one high impressive space is created.
Text and images from Rocha Tombal.