The plot for Villa Ha in Ardooie, Belgium, sits outside the area zoned for housing, and JUMA architects answered that constraint by keeping the entire house on a single story. Holding every function at ground level keeps the building low against the pasture around it and limits how much of it registers from a distance.
Two brick chimney volumes are the only elements that rise above the roofline. Everything else in the plan runs horizontally, so the chimneys carry all of the vertical emphasis without anything competing with them. The facade is laid in Petersen Kolumba K92, a long, slender brick whose format stretches each course and multiplies the horizontal joints across every elevation. The same brick continues on several interior walls, which carries the coursing of the exterior directly into the rooms.
With no upper floor to work with, the studio varied ceiling heights instead. The kitchen and sitting area have taller rooms, while the dining area and bedrooms are noticeably lower. Moving through the house means passing from compressed volumes into open ones, a sequence a two-story house would normally get from stairs and landings. Semi-transparent Rimadesio Sail sliding doors divide several of these zones, so a closed door still shows the room beyond and the circulation stays readable from end to end.
Most of the interior stays in pale, natural tones. Pietra de Medici stone runs across the floors, the kitchen is a JUMA design in oak veneer, and its countertop is Muschelkalk, a limestone whose fossilized shell fragments show at the surface. The Reynaers HiFinity aluminum frames keep window profiles thin, and the door handles are also the studio’s own, a design called Divergence produced by Maison Vervloet.
The sitting area is the one room that breaks from that palette. Its walls are lined to full height in custom teak and the floor changes to wood, so one of the tallest spaces in the house is also the darkest and reads as enclosed. A Bosmans Haarden fireplace anchors the room, with a Flexform Magnum sofa, Charlotte Perriand Indochine swivel chairs, and a vintage Knoll Barcelona chaise arranged toward the window and the sheep grazing in the adjoining field.
