Carré Renovation
Turning a psychiatric hospital into a home
Summary
Client: Private
Year: 2017-2020
Area: 450m2
Status: Finished
Location: Bloemendaal, Netherlands
Inside a repurposed national monument - a 1849 psychiatric hospital - I designed a spacious house for a family. A winding staircase unites what used to be main recovery rooms and its supporting functions.
Working with heritage
Working within an existing building posed a new challenge for me. I hadn’t previously worked in a heritage site, let alone a national monument. We were able to show parts of the old structure and details in the new design but had to compensate for large deviations, crooked walls and sloping floors. It was part of the challenge to make this former Psychiatric Hospital with its vast spaces, into something that has the cosiness of a home.
Part of a community
The 450m2 row house is part of a larger redevelopment, putting forty four homes into the existing structure of the former psychiatric hospital ‘Meer en Berg’ in Bloemendaal, a village near the Dutch dunes. Reinvigorating the community spirit and self-sufficient character that set the institute apart, the inner courtyard features gardens, shared parking space and a large chimney that is to be used for barbeque parties.
Indicated with nr. 26, the house has a south-facing garden with a large tree providing shade and privacy and an entrance in the middle of what was formerly the main corridor of the institute.
Connecting spaces
The structure of the building shows a clear historic division between large, high spaces meant for patients (voorhuis) and smaller secondary spaces facing out of the building (achterhuis). In-between were deep corridors over three floors which were now to be used in a similar way: to connect spaces. But now not just horizontally but also vertically.
Spreading movement & light throughout
The main core of the house allows for both people and light to move throughout the house. Large openings in the loadbearing walls let light from the south-facing facade pour deeper into the house. Especially on the ground floor, where large steel pivot doors are aligned with both garden- and kitchen windows, one is allowed views from the park to the north to the garden on the south and with a view up to the top of the 15m high staircase.
This staircase, with open steps in parts of its design, follows a unique path to evade windows and to allow for as much light to pass its massive structure.
This project was realized at Studio RAP, which I founded and ran from 2014-2020.
All images are copyright © of Studio RAP.