Duo House | VIVA Architecture

In the historic city center of Antwerp two listed buildings are merged into a family home. The challenge is to create a house full of natural light and private outside spaces. By opening up the individual buildings to one another and at the back, spacious open plan rooms are created. Combined with exposed original construction materials, the result is a warm and generous home.

In the historic city center of Antwerp we combined two houses from the second floor up into one. One of the houses is a protected monument and must be retained in its entirety. The other house is included in the inventory of immovable heritage.

To draw more light into the house and to strengthen its relationship with the outside environment we introduced some major interventions. A balanced use of new materials and old materials, that are made visible again, provide a warm, homely yet contemporary atmosphere within the home.

The living functions are deliberately created on the highest floor, on one hand to enjoy the view over the inner city and on the other to ensure privacy above the bustle of the city life. The roof terrace provides a safe place to relax high above the city.

On the upper floors, several breakthroughs are made between the two buildings to link them and to realize a house for 5 residents with contemporary comfort. The interventions that are proposed are always with the original design of the buildings as the intended goal. The original layout of the spaces is retained, or it is turned into one larger space.

Given the low headroom of the rooftop level, we demolished the existing roof in order to create a fully-fledged and usable space. The historic value of the roof is low and is being replaced by a mansard roof. At the rear a terrace is arranged within the volume of the mansard roof. The entire roof is made of zinc in a brown-black shade.

The roof extends as the terrace’s balustrade so that a pure continuous roof shape is created, and the terrace is not visible from the outside. This terrace is accessible via a spiral staircase, placed on the lower terrace in the corner against the rear façade.

The roof structure and roof truss of the other building are made fully visible and restored in the interior. At the rear of the house we provide a full glass façade from the lowest point of the gable roof down to create a fully usable space here.

Old and new go hand in hand and create an authentic city home with a contemporary look.

(Pictures by Koen Broos)