Urban villa Sterkman

Rich spaciousness

Studio Blanca designed a detached house on a 10 meter wide plot at the Heilooërdijk in Alkmaar. The assignment came from a contractor who wanted to build a house for himself. The program was concise: The villa must include a kitchen, living room, study, master bedroom suite and two additional bedrooms with bathrooms. Regarding the design we as architect had a free hand!

The street is characterized by small, narrow, detached houses with a variety of roof shapes and spacings of approximately one meter. To insert the house true to size, scale and rhythm in the historical street scene, it is divided into two halves, with height-staggered pitched roofs, and a transparent intermediate zone of a meter. !

The dichotomy is used to create an interior full of experience in the house. The intermediate strip on the outside of the housing corresponds to the inside with a space over the entire height of the hous in which continuous steps unlock the staggered floors of the two house halves. In one half of the house is realized an one and a half storey high entrance area. That's a spacious entry! In the other half on the rear is realized a void over the entire height of the house. !

This system of interlocking voids and staggered floors ensure that the house is a spational party. It is a dynamic interior of spaces flowing into each other, sight lines, relations between the rooms and changing light. !

The facade is made of red purple shiny stone that fits well with the brick facades of the existing houses. Due to the reflection of the stone changed the image of the facade with changes in the light.

Location: Alkmaar
Size house: 160 m2 m2
lot size: 330 m2