VIVA Architecture: Kitchen blues

A kitchen with an intrinsic, aesthetic value.

These are common situations: people who buy a terraced house in a neighborhood just outside the city and systematically renovate it into a contemporary home that meets all standards and comfort. This often includes the demolition of the existing outbuildings to replace them with a pleasant, spacious new kitchen and dining area bathed in daylight. Project 'Kitchen Blues', a design by VIVA Architecture from Antwerp, perfectly meets these listed criteria, except that the design is much, much more than that. The new extension was realized with a timber frame construction. The kitchen itself becomes a large 'kitchen cupboard' in which you can enjoy cooking, eating and staying.

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VIVA strives for simplicity in essence and form, looking for simple solutions for complex design problems. That idea takes precedence over being part of a design school or movement. That is why for them a seemingly banal architectural intervention – the demolition of existing outbuildings and replacing them with a new building volume – is just as valuable as all the other projects they work on. Because they believe that simplicity is a virtue and from that thought beautiful places for nice people can be created.

The client wanted to expand his house on the garden side to obtain a larger kitchen and thus intensify the connection between the living space and the garden. The existing veranda was used as a storage and laundry room, a physical and visual barrier between the living space, the kitchen and the garden.

The new extension provides great spatial added value for the entire home. As an additional challenge, VIVA had to take into account the client's wish to continue living in the home during the works.

The veranda was completely demolished and replaced by a light, spacious extension with an awning. To minimize the impact on the existing home, the existing structure of the home remained virtually untouched. The building logic and structure of the existing home remains clearly palpable in the new design. The structural elements, such as the rear facade and the low concrete beam, are fully integrated and kept visible in the interior design.

A timber frame structure was chosen as the building type. Under the motto shell construction is finishing, the wooden structure became visible in the kitchen. On the one hand to achieve a contrast in materialization with the existing home, and on the other hand to save on finishing costs. The rough visible wooden grille provides warmth in the interior, the rhythm of the grille was determined by the position of the skylights and the openings in the new window unit. A dynamic atypical rhythm is created in the rear facade, determined by the functional use of the interior space and the link with the covered terrace.

Through strategic placement of the skylights and large windows, daylight can penetrate deep into the existing living spaces and the previously dark interior space becomes a very bright living space. The design of the window distribution and the placement of the wooden elements of the supporting structure were perfectly coordinated, making the window profiles virtually invisible in the design.

A nice detail: integrating a cat flap into the large windows allows the cat of the house to enjoy the indoor/outdoor relationship. A physical boundary that is almost non-existent in use and experience.

A striking detail is certainly the cobalt blue, rounded central kitchen element with beautifully finished round doors with brushed brass-colored handles. This creates 100% accessible cupboard space.

VIVA's architecture is subtractive. Everything that is unnecessary is omitted. What remains is the essence. With an intrinsic, aesthetic power.

Text by Johan Geerts

Location : Antwerp

Area : 68 m²

Date : 2021 - 2023

Photography : Jonah Samyn