Villa Roling - Paul de Ruiter

The clients of villa Röling are passionate art collectors. They love to be surrounded by works of art. Therefore their main wish regarding their new dwelling was that it would do greatest justice to their collection of paintings and sculptures.

However, the location of their house, at the edge of the lake Westeinderplas, is so spendid that it was no option to make a closed volume which would have large wall surfaces for hanging on the paintings but would limit the view of the surroundings. The view of the lake and the garden should be maximal. Therefore we decided to design two contrasting volumes, a transparent glass volume overlooking the lake and the garden, and a ´floating´ wooden box on top of it for the works of art.

Incidence of light

The ground floor consists of a series of museumlike ordened spaces, offering varying views of the lake and the surroundings. The overall glass facade folds itself almost invisibly around the spaces and creates a contour which together with the overhanging superstructure alllows for varying incidence of light. At the outside, back from the glass facade, there are cloths which can be pulled up. The cloths not only screen from solar heat, they create a covered and screened off terrace too.

Spatial unity

The wooden box on top has several big openings in it. In the centre of the house there is an empty space with a skylight and all four facades have a large window. At the two ends of the superstructure are the bedrooms with a maximal view of the surrounding nature. Sunblinds, developed by our own, screen from sunlight and solar heat.

The sunblinds, made of horizontal slats, move like shutters. Because they consist of two parts with a bend in the middle, the shutters when opened raise like porches above the glass facade. The paintings and sculptures can be exhibited in the centre of the house around the empty space. The empty space unites spatially ground floor and top floor and the skylight allows daylight to enter both floors.