Vila KBWW

Unusual requests in the design of this duplex led to an unusual result. Two friendly married couples unevenly divided the building plot in a residential area on the outskirts of Utrecht according to their financial possibilities (they had 550,000 Guilders). For financial reasons, they wanted to build a shared house, but it should maintain the independence of each couple (separate entrances, staircases, and access to the garden). Since they were not looking for any conventional solution to their requests, they approached two young architects: Bjarne Mastenbroek and Winy Maas from MVRDV, who agreed to jointly develop both the concept and the execution. Because both clients wanted separate access to the roof and the garden, conventional horizontal division of such a small area of the house was not feasible. The solution was found in interweaving the apartments with each other. When a particular room required a greater number of cubic meters, it had to automatically reflect in the neighboring apartment. In a very narrow space, a remarkably varied spatial area was created. The architects tried to work with all three spatial axes. The idea of interweaving is not only readable from the sections or floor plans, but is perhaps observable on the facade even when passing the house. The small depth of the house and the nearly square flat front facade (12 m height, 13 m width) allows for easy reading of the internal layout of the house. In a relatively small area (110 m²), the architects managed to create a remarkably generous spatial effect. Upon entering the house, where the kitchen is located among other things, visitors automatically turn their gaze upward into a kind of spatial shaft defined by a concrete wall and a gallery with a library. After climbing two steep staircases, one finds themselves in the living and working part of the house, which integrates into the neighbor's part. From there, one can climb narrow stairs into the box of the bedroom and shower, which are already located at the level of the roof terrace, from where a beautiful view of the city over the park is offered. Except for the inserted bedroom boxes, the southern and northern facades of the house are completely glazed. The inhabitants of the house thus live simultaneously in the wilderness of the garden and openly on the street. Bjarne Mastenbroek speaks of the house as “a kind of X-ray image of the lives of two families.”