Architecture practice in Charles Vandenhove’s office

Liège, October 2007 – October 2008

From october 2007 until october 2008 I worked in Charles Vandenhove’s office in Liège. Charles Vandenhove’s work is characterized by a large variety of projects (from public buildings to private houses and  furniture), a taste for quality and detail and many collaborations with contamporary artists such as Daniel Buren, Olivier Debré, Sol Lewitt, César,… He also collects artworks from the artists he works with and from many others, his collection is now displayed in the Bonefanten Museum in Maastricht. Here are some projects that I worked on, mainly on the presentation drawings and maquettes.

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« Face to face. Here is, over twenty years, the history of two men, two artists, the architect and the photographer, Charles Vandenhove and François Hers. What becomes a building when we look at it, when we stop living in it, walking through it and that we examine it without moving.(…) »

               

Margraten, appartments, 2007

This is the sketch of a housing project in a Dutch village named Margraten in The Netherland. The real estate developer wants to build high standard apartments on a site near an old square farm in a beautiful green landscape not far from Maastricht.

 

The idea is to interact with the farm by reinterpreting its square typology and to follow the path bordered by trees in order to integrate in a subtle way the building into the landscape. A small tower punctuates the crossing of the nearby roads and stands out as a recognizable signal in the flat surroundings.

 

The square typology and volumes, similar to the farm’s allow having luminous apartments with views on both sides of the building. It also creates two more patios linked by footpaths running to the farm and continued through the apartment building. One is public, between the farm and the apartments building; one is semi-public and becomes a collective restful garden for the people living in the apartments.

 

The building is made of thin horizontal concrete lines that follow the floor line and the path, slowly going down and slightly curved. Terraces protected by wooden shutters create moving shadows under the white concrete lines.

 

 

 

Margraten, Second World War memorial, 2007

  The district of Margraten, a small village close to Maastricht, wishes to have a Second World War memorial museum fitted in a wing of an old square farm.  The roof is rotten but the walls, both the façades and the perpendicular walls, are still in good shape.

The idea is to puncture the perpendicular walls with big square openings in order to feel a continuity between the spaces whether they have a first floor or not.The roof would be rebuilt in regular slates but it would be scratched by lines of translucent slates allowing a soft zenital light to enter the building. 

An artist would be invited to design stained glasses that would be fitted in all openings allowing light to come through and creating different coloured atmospheres along the museum.

    

 

 

 

 

Etterbeek, a nursery, 2007

 This project is the answer to a competition for the building of a nursery school in Etterbeek, one of Brussels districts. There is a missing block in a dense area were trees grows and different school buildings are randomly spread between them.The nursery school needs a new building.  

The decision is to make a flower shaped building in which the class rooms take place in the petals whereas the walkways and the common space are in the centre. Every classroom has an access to the outside and thus a direct link with nature. Classrooms have a mezzanine that allows to have a smaller darker place were children can sleep or play quietly and a small hall before entering the classroom, linking to the common space. 

The common space is slightly embedded in the floor marking the walkways, the two stairs allow the children to play or sit down. The space receives zenital light from high windows and from a glass cupola cut in its roof. It opens on the playground.  

An artist would be invited to design the panelling protecting the walls from the central space.

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

       

    

Etten Leur, houses and appartment, 2007 

The project suggests a typology and implantation for a competition on a site in the Dutch suburb. A number of houses from various dimension and a block of high standard apartments take place on a location were old industrial buildings have been dismantled. 

The site is fragmented by parallel walls in between which houses take place with slight shifts that allows adapting to the geometry, always having a good ensolation and creating a feeling of movement in the never similar façades of the streets.  The houses are reached by local parallel streets linked to the traffic network but also by a perpendicular footpath completing the local bicycle and pedestrian local network and linking the houses to the apartments block and a public space. 

The apartment block takes place on the corner of the site, interacting with other blocks on the other side of the road, consolidating the site’s edge on the roundabout and lessening the impact of its shadow on the houses. Its façade is animated by large wooden slightly rounded shutters.