Oosterlinck Apartments Wetteren

This project is for an apartment building on a deep, irregular-shaped terrain in the centre of Wetteren. The scheme consists of an underground garage for 9 cars, 6 apartments along the street side and 3 houses on the inner area. A driveway under the building on the street side provides access to the car park and houses.

The basement is half sunken to avoid direct sightlines into the ground floor apartments. As a result of the compact organizational layout around a central core, the living spaces run from front to back. At the rear, they border indoor terraces that function as extensions of the domestic environment.

The rear volume consists of duplex houses in which every living room and bedroom is oriented towards the sun-drenched inner area. These houses enjoy extra privacy thanks to their location in the back and the direct accessibility of the inner area.

Different configurations of identical, prefabricated concrete elements were used for the frontage, with matching windows in between. The asymmetrical concrete elements not only provide variable window spans, but also add nuance, in the form of subtle shadows, to the otherwise controlled, rectilinear façade.