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A home that celebrates the land

House Lico is founded upon an amazing plot of land that’s rich in nature with incredible views. Having bought the plot, our client’s brief to us was for a large home (185m²) that was also “modest in design, and celebrates the land”. This seeming paradox of scale and modesty provided an interesting design challenge.

  • Client: Private
  • Location: Dworp, Belgium
  • Category: Home
  • Program: Private residence
  • Status: Completed
Schematics OYO lico2

Working collaboratively with the client we understood that they didn’t want to create a home that just made them an observer of the environment.

Together, we narrowed the brief to focus on designs that would make the house a “platform that is one with its environment”. This thinking led us to a design that would actually make the home part of the landscape, and the landscape part of the home.

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LICO c Karen Van der Biest 88


A modern pavilion

Instead of thinking about the structure as a house, we started thinking about it as an incredible pavilion which could be easily sealed or opened to nature. We designed a large single floor structure, almost entirely encircled by floor to ceiling windows which can be opened to bring the outside, inside.

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Part of the landscape. Literally

Our ecological approach demanded that we keep the landscape’s biodiversity as undisturbed as possible. This is why we designed every single square meter of roof to act as an elevated garden. The structure can support enough soil to grow large vegetation and even small trees. It is an area where life can flourish.

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LICO c Karen Van der Biest 148
16008 Li Co Dworp storyschemes ks 01
plot area
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raising the landscape
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adding a minimum of loadbearing walls
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providing supporting windows to maximise views
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greening the roof to blend in with the landscape

An atmosphere influenced by nature

Just 3 loadbearing walls define the home’s large interior. These walls are the backbone of the house, supporting the structure, hiding the necessary technical installations and making sure that every space has certain privacy and is connected and expose to the outside nature. This way the atmosphere of every room can be influenced by the ever-present outside environment – rain, sunshine, dawn, sunset etc. The home’s mood is always in step with the natural world.

OYO Lico Dworp 0 edges
OYO Lico Dworp publication2 2

Everything designed with beautiful purpose

From the start of the project we strove to minimize the amounts of materials used and remove every unnecessary element of design. This is why everything in House Lico has beautiful purpose. From the wooden window frames that act as structural support for the roof (avoid adding steel columns in front of the glass façade), to the bricks chosen for both structural and end-finishing purposes, to the wood of the ceiling which served as part of the home’s concrete casting.

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LICO c Karen Van der Biest 51
LICO SITE IMG 9595

Because we didn’t want to feature obvious columns within the space to support the weight we designed structural support into the window frames themselves, with each window also made of reinforced glass.

A place of natural grandeur

House Lico’s subjectivity to nature, the openness of the interior space and the small number of rooms create a home that feels modest despite its size. Its grandest quality is found in the interplay it enables between what is going on outside and what is felt inside. It is a space that makes any person who experiences it feel a part of the natural world.

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Team
Nigel Jooren, Ferran Massip, Eddy Soete, Xander Denduyver, Mathieu Hellebaut, Sevasti Alexiadi, Maria Navarro, Benjamin Mashford
Credits

Pictures: Karen Van der Biest

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