A wander along the Old River Leie reveals tall, mature trees. In the recent past, a French-style villa known as "the pink house" for its pink-painted facade occupied the site. Although the first drawings for House V-D were made in 2007, it took many years for the project to be finished. Due to a dispute with the city, permission to demolish the existing pink villa, which had undergone various transformations over time, took 2 years. Two new dwellings take roughly the same position as the previous buildings, with the larger volume of the main house parallel to the road, and the smaller guesthouse perpendicular to it. The guesthouse maintains distance from the neighboring house by an inner courtyard that creates a separation from the front facade, allowing the building to step up in height, though staying lower than its white neighbor, due to urbanistic regulations. This "small tower" is mirrored on the corner of the main house, creating a portico that leads to the bosky depths of a large, green garden, harboring a swimming pavilion and pool. While there is an obvious relationship between both volumes, a refined interplay of beautiful red brick walls - open, closed, or perforated with a pattern resulting from intense consultations with structural engineer Dirk Jaspaert - yields a degree of privacy.
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