Project: Sustainable Holiday Home
Architects: Orange Architects
Team: Patrick Meijers, Jeroen Schipper, Vera Ciliberti, Eric Eisma, Paul Kierkels, Panagiotis Seltsiotis, Elena Staskute
Advisors: Ingenieursbureau Dijkstra
Contractor: Cor Koper Bouwbedrijf
Location: De Koog, Texel, The Netherlands
Size 70 m2
Realisation 2021
Photo Credits: Sebastian van Damme
Located on the beautiful island of Texel, only a ten-minute walk from the North Sea, the Sustainable Holiday Home provides a cosy but distinctive stay. The solid yet sculptural interior, which is covered by the black wooden shell, creates a strong contrast between the warm inside and the bold outside.
Large windows on the south side extend the living room out onto the covered terrace and further into the garden, fully integrating the tiny house into its natural surroundings.
We believe that a sustainable holiday home is not like any other residential villa. A holiday is a break-away from our daily routine, and so is the holiday home that accommodates it. That is why we designed the space of the holiday home around the way we want to spend our holiday. During a holiday people tend to spend more time together and there is less need for private spaces. So we optimized the connection of the house to its surroundings and maximized all the spaces inside, allowing most of them to accommodate two functions.
The Holiday Home represents a different approach to space. Instead of dividing the house into different spaces by walls, we decided to divide spaces according to the specific use at any moment in time. When you are on a holiday there are two main moments: day and night. During the day the house transforms into an open, fluid space. Spaces extend even further, through large windows and opened doors, into the surroundings.
During the night, wooden panels can be closed by turning them 90 degrees and the continuous space breaks up into separate spaces. The bed becomes a full-size bedroom, while the hidden shower and sink turn into an en-suite bathroom. By allowing the interior to be transformed when we need it, we managed to optimize the space in the house, keeping it compact and efficient, avoiding dead and unused rooms during the daytime.
The house evokes a very spacious feeling within a relatively compact space. Skylights in the bedroom, library and attic area, window frames as high as five metres to the garden, light coloured birch panelling and movable lamellas all enhance the rudimentary feeling of well-proportioned spaces, poetic lighting and essential materialization.
And don’t let the weather destroy your holiday mood, since the house can be enjoyed in different weather conditions. You can adjust the lamellas on the terrace if it’s windy, you can sit on the veranda if it’s too sunny, and you can watch the raindrops hitting the roof lights if it’s raining, and on a clear night stare out at the stars.
“Solid yet sculptural, tiny but flexible, the Holiday Home provides a cosy and sustainable stay” explains Orange Architects
The tiny Holiday Home was designed using multiple sustainable solutions: almost invisible solar panels on the roof, natural ventilation, a concrete floor in the interior which acts as a thermal mass, a highly insulated roof, facades and windows. The home is all-electric; for cooking, warm water and heating, no fossil fuels are needed. The Holiday Home has been designed as a fully timber structure.
The contractor, whose company is located on the mainland, prefabricated the walls and roof of the building in his workshop. Because of its irregular shape, the structure was first fully assembled in his workshop. After the structure was fitted and finished, it was dismantled and transported to the island, where it was reassembled on-site within a very short time frame. Then, the very distinct finishing of the interior could start, within the protective shell of the prefabricated structure.
