Mamout and Stéphanie Willocx restore 1960s home in Belgium
Belgian architecture studios Mamout and Stéphanie Willocx have refurbished a 1960s home in Hoeilaart, stripping away previous extensions to celebrate the "spirit and quality" of its original design.
Located in a wooded area, the Belgian home was originally designed in 1962 for a group of musicians.
It comprises a brick and glass pavilion and a concrete blockwork garage, which step down its gently sloping site.
Over time, numerous additions to the home and its garden had distracted from its original structures and their relationship to the landscape, and so its new owners tasked Mamout and Stéphanie Willocx with restoring this condition.
"The house was originally a cabin fully glazed and nested in nature," Mamout founder Sébastien Dachy told Dezeen.
"With time, the previous owners have added many elements such as extra veranda, extra walls, and terraces, until it was unrecognisable," he continued.
"We tried to get back to the fully-glazed house and we replanted nature just next to the house, so it feels like it is surrounded by vegetation, blurring again the distinction between inside and outside," added Dachy.
By removing extensions to the home, the original frontage was restored with full-height, sliding glass doors. These open onto a terrace extending onto the roof of the former garage below.
A living, dining and kitchen area occupies the upper building, alongside the main bedroom and a study. Here, the original brick walls have been painted white and the wooden ceiling restored.
Metal kitchen counters, linoleum flooring and a curved wooden staircase in the dining area have been introduced, but chosen to echo the home's original character.
"We highlighted the existing elements such as the wooden structure, the wooden ceiling, the brick walls, the doors," Dachy told Dezeen.
"New elements, such as flooring in rosemary-green linoleum, the small round plywood staircase and the kitchen, were designed to integrate to the existing while subtly asserting their identity as new objects," he continued.
The partially sunken concrete garage has been turned into a bedroom and bathroom for the client's children, with a "stair tunnel" connecting it to the main home.
Its original garage doors have been removed and four tall windows now overlook the garden, which was curated by landscape architect Hélène Mariage to be a "naturalist punk garden" planted with a wide variety of species.
Mamout previously worked alongside Stéphanie Willocx, as well as local studio LD2 Architecture, to convert a former cigarette factory in Brussels into a council office.
Elsewhere in Belgium, architecture studio ISM Architecten also recently completed a mid-century house renovation. Named Beev, it was carried out to improve space efficiency.
The photography is by Séverin Malaud.