This Radically Transparent Home in Eindhoven Tests the Limits of Indoor/Outdoor Living

Nearly every wall is made of glass, giving one family a constant connection to a central courtyard and garden.

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Project Details:

Location: Eindhoven, NL

Architect: Studioninedots

Builder / General Contractor: Buytels Bouwbedrijf

Lighting Design: Jolanda Tielens

Photographer: Frans Parthesius, Studioninedots

From the Architect: "Studioninedots designed Villa Fifty-Fifty, a family home on the edge of Strijp in Eindhoven, as a pavilion where volumes alternate between open and closed, and where life happens just as much outdoors as indoors. It presents a new typology for maximizing visual and family interaction.

"With the design of Villa Fifty-Fifty the architects took the opportunity to push the typology of the transparent house. The clients, who commissioned Studioninedots some years back to design their first house, now desired a minimalist lifestyle and requested to live with nature. Studioninedots sought to investigate a rather radical translation of the view that living and outdoor functions are equally important. Avoiding the obvious locations, all functions are randomly organized as connected volumes between two horizontal planes. This resulted in a pavilion-like house that unfolds across the garden, enhancing the relation between the building and the landscape, and in a unique patchwork of connections between open and enclosed, and inside and out—in essence, half house, half garden.

"The design is complemented with industrial materials, a palette of grays with varying textures. Glass dominates, naturally, to blur the boundaries between inside and outside and to allow for views and open sight lines. Four enclosed volumes feature an unusual application of materials. The primary bathroom volume is clad with flagstones; glazed bathroom tiles adorn the walls in the bedroom and office. The round shed is fashioned from semi-transparent corrugated polycarbonate. Wrapped in polished aluminum, the tower subtly mirrors the landscape, creating an almost camouflaged surface that reflects the changing seasons and weather. Additionally, customized applications elevate industrial elements into refined details. This open garden home connects well to the adjacent woodlands, and the industrial heritage of Strijp-R.

"You’re neither inside nor outside. You move from inside to outside to return inside and end up somewhere outside," says Jurjen van der Horst, architect at Studioninedots.