On a flood-prone edge of Leuven, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen raises Atelier Van de Velde on a perforated concrete base, a one-window atelier for the artist Rinus Van de Velde.
Rinus Van de Velde grew up in Leuven and had long wanted a house in the countryside, though a forest or real nature struck him as too wild and too dangerous. He arrived at OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen with his own drawings, picturing a great deal of glass and a modern construction. Kersten Geers proposed the reverse. Rather than open the house to its surroundings, he would frame the overgrown rear of the plot through a single window and make the land itself into a work. Van de Velde, who says he has no need of daylight to paint, agreed at once. What they built is an atelier that shuts the world out instead of letting it in.
The result is a plain concrete box on the southern edge of the city, and it looks like a cardboard box, a material the artist often uses. Van de Velde makes spaces out of polystyrene and cardboard, and his alter egos turn up in charcoal drawings, life-size ceramics and films, each one a way of pretending to lead another life. The volume runs to 270 square metres. It is, in OFFICE's words, "a fortress and a creative refuge from the world."
The site is flood-prone, so the whole building sits 1.20 metres above the ground on a hollow base. Its lower facade is pierced with a row of round perforations, so that water can pass straight through the empty space beneath. Geers likens the raised volume, with its retractable stairs, to Noah's ark.
Inside, the two levels are not connected. The lower floor is the working space, a dark room with a single opening and a small store, exactly as the artist asked. Wood panelling lines the interior throughout, its visible joints helping to arrange the artworks. Upstairs holds the living quarters, with sleeping area, bathroom and kitchen, lit by two more identical openings fitted with sliding glass panels that bring in daylight.
Each level is reached separately, by retractable aluminium stairs fixed to the outside. "Akin to drawbridges," OFFICE writes, they can be hauled up to refuse entry altogether. Van de Velde left the two halves unconnected on purpose, preferring to spend the floor area on hanging his work rather than on an internal stair. Two aluminium canopies hang from the long edges of the roof, one of them fixed, the other adjustable, for privacy and a covered outdoor area. The overgrown back of the plot, meanwhile, becomes a public garden, which together with the atelier below gives the building a social role beyond the private one.
