OBJECTIVELY OPEN: Exceptional exterior living

Bending the rules in a curiously clever way, Amsterdam-based architecture firm Studioninedots really turned the concept of indoor/outdoor living on its head when it designed and built this home in Eindhoven.

Fifty-Fifty

Villa Fifty-Fifty was born from the clients’ wish to live closer to nature in a more minimalist environment. Studioninedots unpacked the idea of living between inside and out, creating both home and garden in one volume: fifty-fifty, imposing importance on neither one element nor the other.

The family home is in itself rather simple when looking from afar. A large central block rises vertically, which houses the childrens’ bedrooms in a self-contained unit, while the real intrigue lies in the two horizontal slabs on either side, which contain living space and additional bedrooms. All three individual spaces maintain a coherent connection throughout, the home unfolding into the garden and so incorporating the latter into becoming part of the former.

Minimal living

After working with the same clients on a loft project a few years prior, Studioninedots was this time commissioned by the family to design a space which allowed them the garden space they had been lacking, while allowing for a more minimal lifestyle. It was this idea of imposing equal weight on house and garden that resulted in a living space that moves naturally from indoors to out, allowing for green views from across the home.

Importance was placed on maintaining a neutral palette of colour and materials, focusing heavily on an industrial feel and the inclusion of texture. Large-scale glazing allows for the seamless visual connection between home and garden, while innovative materials such as flagstones in the master bedroom, semi-transparent corrugated polycarbonate on the shed and polished aluminium on the tower, which subtly reflects the surrounding environment, lend distinct personalities to each of the checkerboard volumes.