Photographer: Hendrik Briegs

In a quiet street somewhere in Flemish Brabant, a modern white-and-black villa shines brightly in the spring sunshine. For a moment, we imagine ourselves not in usually dreary Belgium, but in a sun-drenched vacation resort. The home clearly bears the stamp of architect Reginald Schellen, who did not land on the project by accident.

A dream come true

The lady of the house: “I had long ago envisioned: if we ever build, then with Reginald Schellen. But when the time came and we were indeed ready to build, Reginald’s schedule turned out to be overcrowded and we had to find another solution.Still, I could not let go of my dream idea and to make a long story short: we bumped into this building plot, we called off the other project and we still worked with Schellen, because then it was possible.”

The facade of the house is typified by black and white and appears to be composed of floating, white frames. It is an effect the architect created by combining dark stone and dark windows with white crepi. But what stands out almost as much as that striking look is the home’s location. The south side of the lot faces the street and the design was to maximize the living spaces – as well as the bedrooms – from that sun. This means that the house is “turned around,” so to speak, so that the main areas of the house face the street. This obviously had a number of consequences.

Architect Reginald Schellen: “You don’t want people just looking in, so we solved that in different ways. We moved the house backwards on the plot and gave it a spacious front yard, enclosed by a hedge and a gate. But that didn’t completely solve the problem, and so we ended up with an L-shape in which we accommodated the garages, among other things, and which helped guarantee privacy. “