ATELIER KOLLER - Ready for the garden party, The Hague/NL

 

READY FOR THE GARDEN PARTY

The 4 story mansion is situated on the opposite side of a row of listed historical buildings in the Archipelbuurt in The Hague. The building with its richly decorated facades and high ceilings has a little front garden and a backyard of about 115 m2.

Accessible from the basement, which the owners renovated and transformed in a first building phase, the owners want to rearrange the garden completely. Partly covered with dark red bricks and partly overgrown by the lawn, plants and bushes, the new garden ground is to become much more mineral with a summerhouse in the very back of the property. This 3m high building consists of two parts:

    - one closed bicycle shed (and storage space for garden furniture) with a back door giving direct access to the street by a small alley;

    - one covered dining area with a barbecue and an outdoor kitchen, completely opened to the garden.

The project is also seen as an opportunity to replace the unstable wooden separation wall to the neighboring plot on the one side by a solid and resistant white stone wall. At the same time the project previews the renovation and restoration of the brick wall towards the other neighbor.

The timber frame construction of the summer house occupies the whole width of the garden. The wooden beams of the slightly inclined roof are left to be seen from underneath. 5 roof windows frame the view onto the back façade of the house. Cedar is used for all woodworks : for the wooden beams, the plywood for the ceiling, the slats for the wooden screen closing the shed visually and the benches incorporated along the new wall.

To receive guests and friends the owners decided on a rather hard, mineral aggregate concrete floor which links the new outdoor kitchen in the summer house to the guest’s kitchen in the basement.

The vegetation plays an important role in the new design: the pants and green on the ground in the old situation is substituted by a green roof, colorful trees and bushes behind the benches, ornamental plants behind the arcades and trailing plants hanging down between the arcades.

The white color of this wall contrasts with the old red-brown brick wall in the background. This new decorative wall fulfills also a stabilizing function and works as a long stretched planter for the ornamental plants of all types. Two water fountains made out of grey basalt complete the arrangement.

FICHE TECHNIQUE / PROJECT DATA
lieu / location: Archipelbuurt, La Haye, Pays Bas / The Hague, The Netherlands
maître d'ouvrage / client: privé / privat
maître d'oeuvre / architecture: Atelier Koller, La Haye / Atelier Koller, The Hague

missions / design phases: Esquisse (ESQ) - Assistance aux opérations de réception (AOR) / Schematic Design (SD) - Construction Administration (CA)

ingénieur de structure / structural engineer: Bouwadviesbureau van der Ven, Ridderkerk (www.vd-ven.nl)

entreprise général / general contractor: Marbuilt, Den Haag (www.marbuilt.com)