Renovation of a farm in Schoonrewoerd | Ruud Visser Architects

The farm in Schoonrewoerd was built in the 18th century. However almost nothing can be found of its origins in the interior.

The farm has two stories: a ground floor and a second floor with sleeping rooms. De ground floor consists of two parts of 100m2 each; a living-room area and a dinner-room area with a kitchen and some remaining functions. The floor plan is an accumulation of all kind of habitations and renovations of former inhabitants. Only the wooden beams are ancient and show something of the original structure.

The owner asked our office to make a design that will restructure the house in relation to their daily use of the

house. Furthermore they wanted to carry on the open structure of their living-room into the dining-room and to open it up to the back-garden.

The main difference between the existing structure and how the owners use the farm nowadays is the direction of the floor plan. The existing structure is situated in the cross-section of the building: the head-entrance with the staircase and a corridor connecting the bathroom, toilet, living-room, kitchen, dinner-room and guest-room. However the owners now use the farm in the longitudinal direction. The entrance is in the kitchen, and from the kitchen the walking direction crosses the former corridor to the living room.

In our design the structure of the floorplan is turned from cross-sectional into longitudinal. All functions are now connected to the longitudinal axes. Furthermore, in the new floorplan the areas are directly connected with each other without a corridor. One walks from one area into the other.

We accentuated these fluent transitions from one area to the other by making the new walls curved. Making the contact between the living-area, kitchen and dinner room in a fluent movement and highlighting the ancient wooden beams.