While living in Belgium I helped design a kitchen. Several years later during Covid my clients, now friends, decided move out of their city and bought a small conglomeration of stone structures built in the 1776. All the design work was done via zoom, emails and photos marked up with dimensions. Luckily, they found a great engineer with knowledge of the local structures and was willing to work on zoom with my very basic French.
We could not alter the historic front facades. The barn in the back and middle storage area bled right into the back of the house making it a very long and narrow structure. The design challenge was to create living spaces with light. The technical challenge was to bring in modern systems like running water, sewage, electricity and heat. We solved this by creating the main entry into the barn next door and then entering the house in the middle. The smaller bedrooms and office facing the street in the original house and the main living and primary suite with terrace in the pig barn facing the garden. The entry, bathrooms, laundry and vertical circulation occurs in the center lit by skylights.
We were able to modify the roof and structure on the garden side. I was there just after the start to meet, review drawings and answer questions.
Bedroom Terrace.
