Villa BA is a brutalist bungalow in a leafy suburb of Bruges designed by local design studio Gosseye + Verbeke. In stark contrast to its elegant, green surroundings, the entire house is designed as a brutal grey concrete. This rough materialization continues in the interior, with flooring and custom cabinetry, interior doors and rough brushed oak tables.

The house fronts onto a smaller forest road with limited traffic, but a lot of hikers. To avoid direct view, the starting point of the design was an enclosed outdoor space that acts as a buffer between public and private. In this way, the house gets actually ‘two’ facades that play with open and closed. What is open in the first one is closed in the second. This zigzag provides the necessary buffer without losing contact with the front garden/street and makes the house still approachable.

The plan of the house is further structured around two, perpendicular circulation axes. These are also made tangible in the architecture, particularly by the concrete path that emphasizes the main axis already from outside the house. Both axes end up at windows so that the connection with the surrounding forest is always preserved and the feeling of openness remains. This connection is further extended into the residential functions that are implemented on the axes. From the living room to the bedroom, all spaces are fitted with wall-to-wall glass so that the forest is drawn in as much as possible.