This article by Alejandro Campos Uribe was originally published in the 9th issue of rita_ magazine under the title "How to Draw the Architecture of Aldo van Eyck: Five Drawings of the Van Eyck Family House in Loenen."
In 1964, after living in Amsterdam with his family for over 20 years, Aldo van Eyck moved to Loenen aan de Vecht, a village about 15 kilometers outside Amsterdam. Months earlier, he had acquired a modest building of about 200 square meters spread across two floors and an attic, originally built in the 17th century and remodeled in the 18th. His intervention would mark the third transformation of this heritage-listed structure, turning it into a home where he lived with Hannie until 1999. To this day, the Loenen house has remained unpublished and undocumented—serving as Van Eyck's final project, occupied as a continuous, lived-in process for 35 years. It is a discreet house that focuses its intervention primarily within its existing walls. Yet, through a series of highly straightforward strategies, it fosters a way of living that aligns with Van Eyck's philosophy, reconciling seemingly opposing spatial concepts.
Part of a deeper research project analyzing the dwelling, this brief essay presents the newly developed graphic documents, showing the house for the first time outside the intimate circle of family and friends[i]. Rather than covering the entire project, this reflection focuses on five aspects of the house translated here into drawings. To this end, the essay first explores the theoretical framework that allows us to understand these drawings not as mere representation, but as architectural design in themselves. Subsequently, it presents the drawings and explains why it was deemed necessary to draw the house this way. This text does not seek to reach definitive conclusions about the home; rather, it aims to present raw material and open it up for discussion. We have avoided presenting a neatly packaged and processed project ready for distribution, as summarizing so many years of lived experience in a few pages would be overly presumptuous. Instead, we explore the possibility of understanding the house solely through what is drawn. Therefore, the drawings do not merely aim to present the geometric and dimensional aspects of the house; they also seek to depict it in a narrative and intentional manner. The plans and their accompanying texts, sparse in explanation, should be read as clues to unraveling the secrets of the house.
