Deep in dunes: Belgian firm OOA creates a seaside shelter with a secret

A brutalist villa with a secret sunken storey has risen from the Belgian dunes near Oostduinkerke, a small seaside town known for its untarnished beaches and shrimpers on horseback. The family home is located within a community of bungalows built in the early 1960s, bordering a protected nature reserve on one side.
Strict building regulations specified the height and distances from the road and to the neighbours, while also requiring the structure to fit in with the residential style. Developing these guidelines into their design, Office O Architects (OOA) also had to meet their brief.
The clients, an older couple, had contradictory demands requesting privacy, yet openness and intimacy for their own living quarters, as well as space for their extended family. Magalie Munters, lead designer at OOA, describes the project as an ‘organisational puzzle’.
Take an interactive tour of Villa CD
They came up with an architectural solution on which the whole property pivots: a concrete ‘table’ and a perpendicular wall at the front of the plot. ‘The combination of the horizontal plateau and the conical wall answers the different questions – structural, constructive, psychological,' says Munters.
The plateau holds the self-serving home for the couple, yet as it extends out the land curves down to open up space for a lower storey, housing two studios for their children and grandchildren. From the back of the villa, the building is a two-storey home, yet from the front it is a bungalow. Similarly, the conical wall has dual functions – operating as a shield for privacy, while its irregular openings bring in light, frame views and seen from the street act as a beguiling design feature.
‘The material choices were mainly guided by a distinct dialogue between the extrovert structure and the bungalow-typology,’ says Munters, who selected the piled white bricks, aluminium and tubular steel railings to reference the mid-century style of the surrounding area and give the home a ‘timeless feel’.
The studios each have private bathrooms and outdoor patios
Irregular cut outs in the conical wall frame the home from the outside, while providing privacy for those within
’The smooth concrete gave the structural principle a powerful and robust appearance,’ says Magalie Munters, head designer at OOA
Minimalist interiors reflect the exterior design
A hanging white chain serves as a rainwater drain, while also creating a zen atmosphere for the studio guests
Cubist apertures in the conical wall offer residents a framed view of streetlife beyond
Continuous materials create an atmosphere of zen inside the rooms
Piled white bricks on the external wall reflect the typical mid-century bungalow style
The plateau protects the dune reserve below, which building regulations required
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the OOA website
Photography: Tim Van de Velde
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Harriet Thorpe is a writer, journalist and editor covering architecture, design and culture, with particular interest in sustainability, 20th-century architecture and community. After studying History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Journalism at City University in London, she developed her interest in architecture working at Wallpaper* magazine and today contributes to Wallpaper*, The World of Interiors and Icon magazine, amongst other titles. She is author of The Sustainable City (2022, Hoxton Mini Press), a book about sustainable architecture in London, and the Modern Cambridge Map (2023, Blue Crow Media), a map of 20th-century architecture in Cambridge, the city where she grew up.
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