This Factory Switches Out Cattle-Fodder for Furniture

A family brings out the best in a neglected space to build their home in Belgium.

Not many people, when faced with a derelict former cattle-fodder factory colonized by pigeons, would immediately embrace it as their future family home. Yet interior architects Renaud de Poorter and Femke Holdrinet, invited by a friend to buy a share of the space in the village of Bellem, Belgium, saw the potential of the unloved building immediately. "It was like a concrete box, with hardly any windows," recalls Poorter. "But with so much space, the potential was clearly there."

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Jane Szita
Amsterdam-based contributing editor Jane Szita took the train to Ghent–three hours away, but a very different Franco-Flemish culture.

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