I recently had the chance to visit the not very widely pub­lished OMA project “Dutch House” in Holten (NL), con­structed in 1993.

It was a refresh­ing change to for once see an archi­tec­tural mas­ter­piece not in its vir­ginal state (on OMA’s site) on top­ping out day nor dressed up for an exhi­bi­tion – but after 14 years of living in it and using it. And the project kept it’s promise. This is also because it is one of the (few?) projects, where OMA cared a lot about the details, and the design comis­sion extended to the choice of fur­ni­ture and inte­rior arrangements.

See all the pic­tures in the viewer below or on our photo page.

OMA on the project:

Chal­lenged by highly uneven topog­ra­phy and a 4m height restric­tion, OMA designed this pri­vate res­i­dence to occupy space both above and below ground. The embed­ded design accom­mo­dates a max­i­mal pro­gram — four bed­rooms, kitchen, living room, study and two ter­races — while making a min­i­mal formal gesture.

Mark­ing the ter­mi­na­tion and final fron­tier of the ice-​age, an end­morene remains as a Dutch hill, about 50m above sea level. The 5000m2 site is located here, in a forest of pine on fine golden “beachsand”. Aside from the unsta­ble ground con­di­tions, spe­cific site require­ments include height restric­tions of 4 m from adja­cent road and exces­sive lim­i­ta­tion of build­able area. Lit­eral inter­pre­ta­tions of these given dic­tate a frame of total length and roof height.
Manip­u­la­tions of ter­rain became sub­se­quent. A drive-​through path was carved out to ensure effi­ciency of access and exit.

The pro­gram con­sists of facil­i­ties for two per­ma­nent res­i­dents – the par­ents – and for three grown-​up daugh­ters, vis­i­tors at most. To fade the pres­ence of their absence, a pro­gram­matic split was intro­duced, mate­ri­al­ized by the slab, held by one house hold­ing the other.

How to trans­late the two dif­fer­ent con­di­tions of occu­pa­tion related to spe­cific site and ground, autonomously and with moments of inter­ac­tion, became our focus. Fur­ther, to com­press max­i­mum pro­gram into a min­i­mal amount of formal gestures.

At zero level, one wrap­ping wall is defin­ing a con­ti­nu­ity of inside areas and patios for the daugh­ters “motel”, intro­verted and grounded.
The float­ing deck sup­ports a crys­tal­lized con­tainer of par­ents pro­gram. One hing­point, the piv­ot­ing bridge/horizontal door feeds both bed­room unit with patio above/service entry below. The con­tent of wall itself is dic­tat­ing, but leav­ing sur­round­ing space free within the glass-​box. Phys­i­cally detached, but visu­ally inclu­sive of site. Var­i­ous treat­ments of glass and shad­ings are manip­u­lat­ing this mutual rela­tion­ship, accord­ing to pro­gram and orientation.

The node of the house is a cen­tral ramp, pro­vid­ing visual and func­tional con­nec­tion between the two counterparts.

Para­dox­i­cally this phys­i­cal cut is where rec­on­cila­tion is found.