Mr. Tilman was a truck dealer and owned a square plot of 23 ares in a tree-rich subdivision. He wanted a spacious single-story home for his family with two children. The floor plan that Neefs’s developed had little connection to the purely square shape of the building plot. Only the facade, if it can be called that, ran parallel to the public road. The floor plan, however, was a complex irregular polygon; it appeared to be a kind of angular organism that nestled itself into the terrain. Both inside and outside, hardly any wall was perpendicular to another. They intersected at angles of 30° or multiples thereof. As a whole, the plan showed some affinity with that of Villa Leuring which Henri van de Velde completed in Scheveningen in 1903. The Tilman residence, however, was not organized around a hall but around a patio – a somewhat remarkable choice for a detached house on such a spacious plot.
This concept presumably evolved from the clients’ request to drive straight into the garage when coming home and immediately store purchased groceries in the cool storage area near the kitchen. In fact, the garage was conceived as the residents’ entrance, from where they would enter their living space through the kitchen. The entrance for visitors was at the other end of the house and was accessible via a path that ran along the blind facade. The placement of the garage with adjoining storage and kitchen on the east side, with the living room connecting to the south side, left no room for well-oriented bedrooms except on the street side. It appears that the architect therefore decided to incorporate the bedrooms internally, orienting them toward the southeastern sun through a patio.
The entrance hall (for visitors) led directly to the living room, a succession of different areas: conversation pit, sitting area and dining area. The conversation pit was connected via an interior window to a small study. The sitting area and dining area, which were distinguished from each other by a bend in the patio wall , looked out onto the south through a large glass wall. Located between this glass wall and that of the patio, the fireplace corner was essentially a transparent space. However, in proportion to the total size of the house, the living room was not very spacious, and even somewhat narrow at the aforementioned bend.
The house changed owners in 2005. It was purchased by the De Kroon-Van Gorp couple, he being the head of a direct marketing agency, she a nurse. They and their two children were very pleased with the house from the start but found the living room somewhat narrow and wanted to expand it. After learning that the architect had retired from practice twenty years ago, they approached Lou Jansen. However, he was particularly reluctant about the idea of modifying a work of his highly esteemed friend and colleague and possibly altering its character. Eventually, he suggested that Mrs. De Kroon should still contact Neefs’s , promising to lend a helping hand with the development and execution if desired. And so it happened. The contact with Neefs’s went extremely well. One evening he visited and when he understood what the new owners wanted – more space, and room for a piano – he made a design sketch for the extension right there and then. This sketch was developed by Jansen in consultation with Neefs’s into a complete project and executed. The result of this collaboration is a particularly beautiful, luminous living space that unfolds generously from east to south. The impression that it unfolds is enhanced by the diagonal trace of the former outer wall being maintained in the ceiling. The original lintel was preserved as a support beam which, supported by slender columns, differentiates the large space into successive sections: next to the spacious new sitting area, a dining area and a fireplace corner. The space was furnished as sumptuously as it was refined with furniture by Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, Charles Eames, Verner Panton and others.
‘Architecture in the Golden Sixties – The Turnhout School, Lannoo Campus, 2012’.
