Architecture in the wild

A special location invites special architecture, with which man claims his place in nature. As the five projects discussed here show. "Everywhere you are embraced by nature."

Text: Jeroen Junte

The W.I.N.D. House - UNStudio

Like a four-leaf clover, The W.I.N.D. House by the international architectural firm UNStudio sits in the polders of North Holland. It is a rural villa with classic wings but a contemporary expressive form. "The various living functions such as sleeping, working, cooking and bathing are distributed across the four cloverleaves, albeit crisscrossed, for example sleeping above the music room," says architect Ben van Berkel. "The house has no columns or load-bearing interior walls. The flexible open rooms are connected by a transparent-looking staircase. In a kind of infinite 8-shape, you can move through the house and still be in constant contact with each other."

Private rooms like bedrooms and study are at the back of the organic villa overlooking a forest edge. At the front, the kitchen and dining room face a vast polder landscape. "But the floor plan of the house is intentionally flexible so that it can be relatively adapted to changing living conditions, for example, when the children leave home." The remarkable clover shape is also a way of connecting the house to the vast polder landscape. While the side walls are closed, the front and rear facades are made entirely of glass. A graceful notch in these glass facades delineates the "clover leaves" in window sections that are angled to one another. This creates ever-changing lines of sight to the surroundings from the four wings, just as the four seasons flow together. "Because the glass has a mirror-like coating, you sometimes see a dark reflection of nature in the opposite window, giving an almost surreal effect." The spacious roof terrace across the full width of the villa offers a grand view: from there you can look for miles across the flat polder landscape.

The interior is full of home automation. With a touchscreen in the stairwell, the living climate can be controlled throughout the house, but also for each room separately. Security and sustainable gadgets like cold and heat storage and solar panels are also tuned this way. "That's how we ended up with a comfortable and energy-neutral home," he says. The smart home is finished with sustainable wood in a decorative relief on the side walls for maximum load-bearing capacity and efficient water drainage.

With his firm UNStudio, Van Berkel designs grand and compelling architecture like the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam or the subway system of Doha, Qatar. Yet he personally bent over The W.I.N.D. House. "The design of a residential house is an intimate inventory of a personal life. How do the residents live together? How do they get up? How do they eat? What are their rituals? It is precisely in that small scale that the essence of architecture lies: creating safe, pleasant living environments. "Photo: Fedde de Weert

Dune villa - Hilberink Bosch Architects

The Duinvilla by architecture firm Hilberink Bosch has three different living levels that are nevertheless all on the first floor. How is that possible? Because of its location on a dune of drifting sand on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. "The architecture is sculpted around this difference in level," said architect Geert Bosch. The villa is composed of five concrete slabs that are slid into the dune in a linked fashion. From the living room on the second floor you walk up the dune top, from the first floor you have a view of the lower nature garden and from the indoor pool you walk straight into the forest, while - because of the stairs to the living room above - it feels like a basement. "Wherever you are, in the study, the guest house, the living room, the pool or on one of the four terraces, everywhere you are embraced by nature."

The villa owes its stacked form to the client's desire to make enough room for his art collection. "That's why we chose long straight walls," he says. To avoid a hard cut between the austere architecture and nature, architect Bosch defined this boundary very gradually. The concrete terrace and the sand and grass interlock like long fingers. The rainwater is collected in a rectangular pond that coincides with the austere architecture, but gradually turns into a whimsical natural pond to end up in the forest. From the street, although there is first a kind of court with access to the various residential functions: garage, guest house and front door. But an underpass of the house - you literally walk under the living room and associated terrace - immediately gives a sneak preview of the nature behind.

Through balanced use of materials, the Dune Villa is not only embraced by greenery, nature has also been brought inside. "We went to the brick factory with pine bark to choose a brick with the right color palette. That ended up being a brick made of three types of clay. The length varies from twenty to as much as a hundred centimeters, so it is not monotonous masonry but a whimsical brick wall that looks like tree bark." The birch grove that had to be cut down for construction was incorporated by designer Piet Hein Eek into an organic wall box in which the entire trunk is visible. The bronze-colored window frames made of anodized aluminum change color intensity under the influence of sunlight. Even the concrete looks natural, as it is exactly the same color as the dune sand. "Initially we wanted to make concrete from that dune sand, but that turned out to be impossible due to the grain structure. However, the concrete was finished in different ways: from roughly brushed on the terrace to shiny polished in the entrance hall, and everything in between." In this way, Hilberdink Bosch used only three materials: wood, concrete and natural brick. "Some restraint is appropriate in a landscape formed in the Ice Age," he said.

You can read about the other special projects in MASTERS #47. Never miss anything from MASTERS? With 4 high-profile MASTERS editions, the annual LXRY LIST and many more extras, you will easily receive lots of reading pleasure at home: substantive reports, great photography and unique brands, trends and places in the world. Give it to yourself or a loved one as a gift. Conveniently close your subscription here.Photo: Jeroen Junte