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Architects: Martens Willems & Humblé Architecten
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Arjen Schmitz
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Manufacturers: Reynaers Aluminium, Van der Sanden
Text description provided by the architects. The building is designed for a collective of private clients. Hidden behind an old factory wall in the city center on a plot of the former industrial area of Sphinx Porcelain. The name 'Les Mouleurs' is carved in stone above the main entrance. Named after the mold makers from the former porcelain factory that stood at this location. But it also symbolizes the way in which the building was constructed.
The building plays a volumetric and compositional game with the old factory wall and the rhythm and height of the city. The main building of ‘Les Mouleurs’ extends the wall of the old ceramics factory and encloses a collective inner garden with an embracing L-shaped movement. This courtyard is the central meeting place for the residents. An oasis in the busy city center.
The narrow main building has wide apartments where a lot of light can enter from both sides and a connection exists to both streets as a courtyard. Apartments have different sizes and flexible layout options and a compact and central vertical circulation for maximum privacy. Indoor spacious loggias instead of hanging balconies to separate the placement of the outdoor space from the overall architectural composition.
No apartment is the same, in size and functionality. That’s why throughout the structure, the different characters of the residents show in the different facade layouts; however, the main expression of the collective structure is never lost.
In the case of the north facade, which is located on a narrow street, there is no need for formal representation. We will never be able to perceive this facade as a whole. The strict order of the window positions we started with, was allowed to completely fade here, due to changes from within. At most, the basic scheme still shimmers through.
The same goes for the facades on the inner garden where the many loggias with different and more compositional freedom could be taken. The garden house, on the other hand, towers over the wall more formally and differs in a tectonically different language.
The duality between the main volume and the white ‘garden house’ is also expressed in the choice of materials. The white concrete contrasts with the dark brick that appears to be from the old factory buildings. Together with the French limestone façade elements, which resemble the marl stones of the adjacent Andries chapel. It is clearly a new addition to the cityscape, but one which seems to have always been there. Not a literal copy of shapes from the past, but a reference to them.
A strong integration of the building with sustainable building technology has been achieved with a smart roof in which heat exchange, ventilation, and PV panels are integrated; a well-insulated shell with brick from a local brick factory; for maximum daylight entry and limitation of the cooling load sun protection has been integrated into the window detailing and the glass, and the energy supply is linked to the nearby paper mill for the heating and cooling the building.
