Huis te Wiel

The design for the ‘Huis te Wiel’ estate is a careful composite of the existing farm, two new houses and an annex.

By adding the new buildings, we created a courtyard. The existing farm, a national monument, has preserved its main building status and the hierarchy is strengthened as the new buildings are constructed like this farm: its slanted roof and the different directions of the ridges of the front of the house and of the attached barn are copied in the new buildings.

The buildings’ unity and coherence are increased by adding structuralizing elements – duckboards and platforms – that mark the transition between the collective and the private. The decoration of the yard includes elements – a hedge, formal beds of plants – that refer to the location’s past. The master plan design echoes the various strata of the country estate’s rich history.

The materialization of new buildings refers to an agricultural past, the yard and the composition refer to the history of ‘Huis te Wiel’.