House, Almere
The house was designed for
an ‘unusual homes’ competition held by De Fantasie in Almere. The brief was to
design a house without taking into account current building regulations. All
prize-winners were awarded a plot of land on loan for five years. This meant
that the house and its foundations had to be easy to dismantle. In the compact
house, the living room is bounded on three sides by glass sheets to gather the
surrounding landscape into the house. Sandwich
panel walls enclose the private zone comprising the two bedrooms, kitchen and
bathroom. The extraordinary construction of the house combats wind pressure in
three ways. The space-frame floor structure is attached to a foundation of
concrete slabs, stabilizing fins are placed strategically at the seams of the
toughened glass sheets and finally two steel tension cables secure the
lightweight profiled steel roof borne aloft by the glazing.
Client
Family J. Benthem
Architect
Benthem
Crouwel Architekten
Gross
floor area
65
m²
Start
design
1982
Start
construction
1982
Completion
1984
