(02)Projects/Renovation

House M

Knokke, Belgium / 2025

Vaulted, whitewashed room with arched windows and a brick floor

Location: Knokke, Belgium
Year: 2025
Scope: Renovation / Interior
Area: 340 m²
Status: Completed
Materials: Lime plaster / Aged oak / Brick

A 1930s seaside villa stripped back to its structure and re-ordered around one long room facing the dunes.

The villa had been extended four times and each extension had its own idea of a ceiling. We removed most of what was added and kept what was honest: the vaulted entrance, the brick floors, the deep window reveals.

New work is limited to a handful of gestures — a lime-plastered wall that now runs the full length of the ground floor, a staircase cut from a single oak beam, and a bench where the corridor used to be.

Small table and folding chairs among plants in a shadowed concrete room — **Fig. 01**Winter room, folding table and plants

Sunlight through a diamond-paned window into a dark interior — **Fig. 02**Front door, leaded glass retained

Dark leather bench beside a curved window in a concrete room — **Fig. 03**Corridor bench, set into the curved wall

“Renovation is mostly the discipline of leaving things alone.”

Close view of aged oak, grey and silvered, with knots and saw marks — **Detail**Reclaimed oak, treated with soap

Bare branches in a stoneware pot beside an aged plaster panel — **Fig. 04**Hall console, branch and stoneware

DetailLime plaster, three coats

Credits

Architecture: Elise Martens
Interior architecture: Julien De Clercq
Objects & furniture: Mila Verhaeghe
Contractor: Bouwwerken Peeters (fictional)
Photography: Placeholder — see README

Fictional project. Names, figures and credits are placeholders created for a portfolio concept.

Next project (03)

Maison 17