Steel Craft House

The Steel Craft House is a fine example of self-building. In a period of ten years, a former garage was converted into a wooden residence with a Corten steel façade. It was a challenging task where good cooperation, perseverance, and love for the craft led to an incredible end result. Zecc designed the façade, the clients realised the entire project themselves with the assistance of befriended craftsmen. Every steel sheet and every oak slat literally passed hands several times.

In the Steel Craft House, the stylistic features of a working-class house were revamped. The residence strongly stands out in abstraction and material, but it is in keeping with the adjacent buildings through shape, composition, and detail. Features like the characteristic façade layout, the roof cowl with dormer, and a chimney were translated in the steel cladding. Stylistic elements like a plinth, alternating stone bands, brick-on-edge courses, and cornices can also be found in the steel sheet pattern.

The windows in the new façade all have their own character, anticipating the function that is housed behind them, but jointly form an abstract composition. At the street level, a transparent recessed front was chosen, which had already been present in the façade appearance, and this way it is more in keeping with the neighbouring buildings. The ‘bay window’, shaped as a cantilevering enclosed surface at the location of the bathroom, provides for privacy. A small air gap was made at the top. The second surface on the first floor is a mini loggia / French balcony, behind which the living room is located.