Dutch architects DP6 work across a variety of scales, from university campuses to town halls, sports centres and apartment buildings. The Delft-based practice has also turned its collective experience to a small number of exquisite private residential projects, including the secluded Villa Santpoort. For their most recent residential design, a painter's studio in their home city, DP6 is once again working in an urban environment, only this time at a much smaller scale.
Painter's Studio, Delft
Tour a modern painter’s studio and home in Delft
This commission, a house refurbishment and painter’s studio, is located in the heart of the city centre and involved not just the restoration of a traditional canalside row house, but the addition of a dedicated artist’s studio in the rear garden. Making the most of a generous garden plot – ‘a green oasis in the city centre’ – DP6 have inserted a low single-storey studio at the far end. Set apart from the cityscape, surrounded by new wild planting, it feels like a rural space adrift from the urban location.
The newly refurbished ground floor of the house in Delft
One of the key aspects of the refurbishment was the re-shaping of the house’s ground floor and the rear façade in particular. By creating a new open-plan living, dining and kitchen space at the rear of the house, along with a new glazed rear façade, the architects have set up a dialogue between the existing house and the new studio. Each façade is fully openable, so in the summer months life can flow between the structures.
The garden includes new patios and an oval pool, along with natural planting that retains existing mature trees and winds new paths and beds around them. The studio has been built from Douglas fir timber, with exposed interior structure and a canopy above the exterior terrace, looking back towards the house.
Looking back at the main house from the new studio
Vital northern light is harvested via a strip of roof lights at the far end of the studio space; these run the full width of the building. The studio is also self-contained, with a WC and kitchenette and plenty of storage for materials and canvasses.
Painter's studio, Delft by DP6
The architects have made extensive use of oak for the new elements in the main house. These include the kitchen and fireplace, as well as the open tread staircase and upstairs wardrobes. The original house was listed for its historic interest, and the front façade retains its traditional appearance, giving no indication of the new world that lies within.
The traditional facade of the canalside house