OFFICE 48

Extending over the entire deep lot in a small village near Ghent, Kitchen House was to serve as both a residence and a workspace for the owners’ catering business, which they could use for cooking workshops or rent out. The plan is organised as a sequence of rooms that are connected through a narrow service passage along the perimeter wall. The house is conceived as a modular steel frame construction clad with openable polycarbonate panels. Inverting the typical order of house and garden, the first room is an empty entrance patio adjoining a kitchen of the same size, with a small guest room on the upper floor. Behind the kitchen, a secluded private bedroom is set between two open patio gardens. The ridged glass roof above the first room can be folded, allowing for flexibility of use and further obscuring the status of the interior.