Dutch studio Ruud Visser Architecten has “stretched” the length of an early 20th-century townhouse in The Hague, and added a large window with a cross-shaped wooden frame to the new rear facade .
The short was to add a easy single-storey extension to the two-storey building – similar to the other five properties that make up a row fronting the Delftweg river in Rijswijk.
But Ruud Visser – whose past projects incorporate a residence in a converted church – felt that the residence was much more in need to have of extra room upstairs, and proposed extending the whole creating towards the garden by two metres.
“We observed that the lack of room was not on the ground floor, but on the initial floor,” explained the architect. “The sleeping rooms of the young children date back to 1900, and in a single of the rooms there was not even room for an typical single bed.”
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“By practically stretching the house by just two metres, we could make two typical-sized children’s rooms on the 1st floor. And by performing that we develop sufficient room on the ground floor to make a comfy dinner space with a kitchen,” he mentioned.
However this notion went against regional planning regulations, which stipulate that extensions can be no higher than 3 metres. So Visser wrote to the local council and persuaded them to make an exception. He named the venture Stretched House.
“[We attempted] to convince them our programs had been far better for the long term of the neighbourhood. And it worked!” he mentioned.
The new rear elevation has precisely the same profile as its predecessor, with a white-rendered surface, a steeply angled gable and a rectangular parapet at its peak.
The big window that punctures the wall is a lot more modern. It is divided into four by a wooden crucifix-shaped frame – the only decorative component of an otherwise easy finish. Big expanses of glazing have also been used when extending an Antwerp home, in the form of six-metre-higher doors, and a London house that now functions a giant corner window.
“We left the facade as it was, with its characteristic 19th-century features,” explained Visser. “But as an alternative of several little windows, we made one particular large window separated into 4 components. Each portion of the window opens to a different residing spot.”
The house’s ground floor had presently been open program and pretty spacious, but the further two metres at the back has permitted twice as considerably space in the kitchen, as properly as space for a larger dining table.
Upstairs, the two children’s rooms now match one particular an additional in dimension, and the bathroom is also larger.
Photography is by René de Wit.
Project credits:
Architect: Ruud Visser Architecten
Venture architects: Ruud Visser, Fumi Hoshino
Constructor: Schouten Bouw
Aluminium window frames: Schuco
Constructing cost advisor: Maarten Oosschot
Concept diagram 
Ground floor prepare 
First floor plan 
Roof strategy 
Sections
