The Refuge is a red concrete pavilion situated in a landscaped garden of a single-family house deep in Flanders’ suburban landscape. The goal of the project is to bring peace and serenity to the garden, which is achieved through the relationship between interior and exterior and by creating contrast through materiality, colour, and geometry.
The owner requested a plan to structure and to rethink the garden that was left unkept after the construction of a brick family house. A vegetable garden, yoga platform, bike shed, studio space, swimming pond and small pool house were to be added to the terrain, which is characterised by large pine trees.
NWLND
Instead of designing a swimming pond alongside the garden pavilion, Rogiers Vandeputte, Jeroen Provoost and their partners designed a garden pavilion which integrated the swimming pond within its perimeter: a Refuge. A square building that relates to the twisted lot boundaries and structures the entire backyard. The excavation necessary to construct the swimming pond was extended to create an underground studio space.
The Refuge stands among the trees and is strongly subject to the influence of nature. This is taken into account during the design process, and special emphasis has been placed on materiality, colour and geometry so as to complement and contrast with its surroundings. When examining the concrete samples during the construction process, not only was the colour of the concrete itself taken into consideration but also the colour of the formwork panels, as the pigment used to colour the concrete soaks into the plywood.
Early in the project NWLND decided that instead of discarding the plywood panels after demoulding, the nails were to be removed and the panels gently cleaned, so that they could be used as a finish for the insulated inner shell of the pavilion. The parts of the plywood that are uncoloured are due to the recesses in the formwork for openings in the concrete walls, and these unpigmented portions of the plywood give a hint of its origin as formwork and provide a contrast in colour and texture. All of the metal joinery and metal elements in the garden are painted in the same deep red – a red that fits well in the green environment.
Once architects made the decision that the swimming pond would be inside the pavilion it was obvious that the pavilion would be made out of concrete: that way, the swimming pond does not have to be lined. The concrete mass should be seen as a skeleton, matter that could over time become a ruin. The exterior of the twisted pavilion is concrete. The overflow filter pond and the patio that gives light to the underground etching studio are bordered by brick walls. They follow the axes of the house and were made with the bricks left over after the construction of the house. In this way, a dialogue is created between the house and the Refuge. The colour of the concrete was chosen based on the different shades of red of the bricks and their contrast with the green surroundings.
The building follows Brand’s scheme in which there is a distinction in the life span of the different layers of a building. The concrete shell is completed with an interior finish layer that can vary in the future according to use. The different layers are separate and not glued together. The project is self-sufficient and off the grid. It is connected to the solar panels on the main house and has its own heat pump, as well as a self-contained sewage system.
All of the fixtures in the project were carefully selected from a demolished office building. Special considerations were made during the construction process, so that the formwork for the concrete could be repurposed as the interior finishes.
Although the assignment started with a Garden Pavilion it developed towards a Gesamtlandschaft that reconfigures the entire garden and the relationship between interior and exterior, manicured and unkept nature. This evolution became possible through intensive collaboration between NWLND, the client (also educated as an architect), the landscape designer Jeroen Provoost and the concrete contractor (of whom it was his last assignment before retirement).
Photo
Johnny Umans
