Hemelkamer

Prominent and overlooked; corner buildings are often both. With their proud façades, they crown the ends of city blocks. Wrapping around the bend, they dominate views from multiple streets at once. They stand guard at intersections and have a unique power: to look down the length of a street. At the same time, they’re enclosed. Rarely do they come with a garden or meaningful outdoor space. Often hemmed in, squeezed from the back by neighbouring plots. They are free and confined all at once.

There is such a house, one without room, where we refuse to be stopped from making more of it. Inside, we need extra space. Outside, we need it too. But there is none. So we add a room, one that can change with time. Today a study, a second living room. Tomorrow, perhaps a bedroom. And alongside it: a terrace that does all a tiny urban garden should be able to do. A BBQ with friends. A child at play. The evening sun stroking a hammock. Since there’s no room left on the ground (the plot is full), we do what skyscrapers do: we repeat the ground above. Rooms that face the sky. Rooms like the sky, floating above the concerns of the world below. A Hemelkamer (a room in the sky).

Room and terrace are positive and negative; form and counterform, a Rorschach with less flourish. The building line, that is also the property line, is jagged. Onto that angular drawing we place a simple rectangle. Calm and clarity. The space between the two becomes a terrace full of folds and corners.

The room is a small box; a prefabricated timber garden room, craned down in one piece. With generous windows that capture the full potential of the corner plot. Windows that also allow the space to be subdivided. Ready for an as-yet-unbuilt future. The room and terrace are bathed in sun throughout the day. In the distance, the towers of Ghent shimmer in the falling summer light.

The terrace, a garden in stone, gets its trees. Steel columns trace the outline of the façade, the outer edge. Filled with hooks and perforations. For string lights or sunshades. For hammocks or trailing plants. For a washing line or a bird feeder.
Swifts dart through the sky above, three of them spiralling in the dusk. I light a garden candle and leave the doors open.