Together with the family, the designer has obliged the architect Taturo Miki to implement their ideas into reality. The founder of his company of the same name, Tatsuro Miki Architects, is a Japanese talent that has lived in Brussels for more than two decades. Miki and Vervoordt are frequent employees, and together they have completed several projects, including the celebrated Tribeca Penthouse in the Greenwich Hotel. You have put together the book Wabi inspiration (Flammarion, 2011), which has become a significant reference in Wabi-Sabi philosophy in design and architecture.
“In many of our work,” says Miki, “we are looking for a dialogue between East and West. In this project, we wanted to combine the formality of this old home with a new barn -like structure, which included Wabi elements.” In a conversation, Vervoordt and Miki often continue the sentences of the other to improve and overlap the importance of what they try to convey. “Yes,” says Vervoordt, “the old part of the house is formal and the newcomer is meditative-like Yin-Yang. Each room has a unique atmosphere. If you bring everything together, it's like a world.”
What a peaceful world it is. The feeling of harmony results from the balance between the two structures of the 19th century, everything revolves around color and layers, and the new barn is connected to nature with the iconic minimal magic of the duo. A long, almost empty corridor connects the two parts. Strategically placed windows have a deeper meaning. They are set at eye level, too low to see right outside when you walk along the hallway. “The windows offer a view of the floor,” says Vervoordt. “As in a monastery, the long sidewalk is preparation for the mind.” Miki uses the Japanese term Roji to describe the feeling – a path that serves as a transition room on the way to a tea house. “It's about openness and the preparation of the mind to enter another world.” A window in the primary bedroom is also low at the height of the bed to offer a reserved view of calm and calm.
