OFFICE 7

Summer House covers the entire surface of a courtyard at the rear of a nineteenth-century townhouse in Ghent, replacing a standard winter garden addition. As a light steel construction around an inner court, this ‘patio villa’ forms a studied contrast to the massive series of rooms of the existing house. Its rectangular footprint is defined by a grid of 30 x 30cm floor tiles and by a precise modular frame of steel sections, whose height – at 290cm – relates to the surrounding brick wall, which is painted white. Tucked into the margins of the irregular lot are a storage shed, an outdoor kitchen and a wood store, concealed behind mirrored glass doors. A narrow 2.4 metre wide section adjoining the existing house is roofed with steel grilles, enabling daylight to filter through. Six fins of mirror-polished stainless steel, anchored between frameless sliding plates of single glass, support the roof, creating an enclosed loggia that has direct access to the old house through the existing door openings, which are set at a slightly higher level. In contrast to the transparent sliding glass, these framed glass doors have a reflective coating that obscures inward views, visually detaching the two houses. Lying between interior and exterior, the entirely glazed room has no fixed function or furniture but provides a different kind of domestic comfort, performing as an additional layer of insulation. A veil of grapevines grows all around the modular perimeter and completes the garden, in tandem with the two existing trees.