#RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS
This factory turned family home uses curved walls to play with light
You might imagine a former factory would be a dark, gloomy space, but Belgian designers Graux and Baeyens have taken a warehouse loft near Kortrijk and turned it into a luxurious, curvy family home that plays with light.
The home features classic earth tones and vaulted ceilings, along with plenty of windows and curving walls that guide daylight throughout the space. The 150 square meter space (about 1614 square feet) features tall windows and vaulted brick ceilings, while incorporating two large steel columns that divided the factory space.
The architects wanted to focus on the columns but also keep them from blocking the windows, so they created rooms utilizing the columns around the perimeter of the room. The curves move through the space providing continuity, even though the rooms don’t always match up. Adding a second story in the space also allowed the architects to add 92 square meters to the livable space. Windows were added to the interior walls to “create views between rooms.”
“The design consists of two levels, they individually drape around the existing columns and unfold themselves towards the windows,” Graux explained to Dezeen. “This curtain gradually absorbs light and separates the individual rooms of the living spaces. The uniqueness of place is created by variations of concave and convex lines, cantilevers and double-height ceilings.”
The design of the loft is an exercise in the filtering of light, Graux said. The curved surfaces are designed with the idea that they will capture light from the windows and let it shift into the shadows in the home gradually. In order to facilitate the design, new steel construction was installed and covered in plasterboard. The board was coated with pigmented lime plaster and the existing walls and ceilings were painted white.
