In the dune landscape of Oostduinkerke, Belgium, Magalie Munters Architecture shapes Villa Nouvelle Vague as a sculpted concrete mass — curved and grained like sandstone at low tide, half-buried in the terrain it echoes.
Villa Nouvelle Vague is conceived as a sculpted mass within the dune landscape, shaped by terrain, wind, and light rather than by facade composition. The volume is deliberately tapered toward the rear of the plot, allowing the house to settle more freely within its site and creating a more generous garden while avoiding the typical equidistant margins of suburban parcels. The subtle shift in geometry allows sunlight to strike both southern and western facades — a rare condition in a compact volume — so that light continuously wraps the building throughout the day.
Toward the street, the house presents a protective shell. The curved facade is not applied form but shaped mass, sculpted in response to dune topography and wind direction. Its silhouette quietly echoes the nearby boat-building Normandie — a distant maritime modernist reference — without becoming literal. The concrete surface carries a horizontal grain that recalls the sand at low tide, when the sea withdraws and leaves delicate striations behind.
Concrete continues inside as spatial substance rather than finish. The staircase, bathrooms, built-in seating, and kitchen are conceived as carved elements within the monolithic body — robust, tactile, and unadorned. The interior reads almost like the inside of a shell: lime-washed surfaces, half-buried bedrooms that feel sheltered rather than subterranean, and a sequence of rooms that moves from compressed entry to expanded living spaces oriented toward the dunes.
Villa Nouvelle Vague borrows its name from the French cinematic movement and lives up to it: there is something filmic in the way light sweeps across the curved walls, in the deliberate framing of landscape through deeply set openings, in the sense of narrative that builds as you move through the house. Magalie Munters has produced an architecture that is both of its place and unmistakably authored — a house shaped by the coast as much as it is placed upon it.
