06-02-2017

A garden house by Caspar Schols

Eindhoven, Netherlands,

Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the biggest challenges for every architect is to design something for a close family member.



  1. Blog
  2. Materials
  3. A garden house by Caspar Schols

A garden house by Caspar Schols Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the biggest challenges for every architect is to design something for a close family member. And although Caspar Schols isn’t a fully-fledged architect yet, he has already designed a beautiful garden house that meets the needs and wishes of his mother, a person with a wide range of interests.


Using architecture as a form of self-expression is certainly one of the strongest reasons for deciding to have something built specifically for yourself. We want to give who we are some kind of physical form, reveal our identity through the architecture. And it doesn't have to be anything big either, as we can clearly see in this project by young Dutchman Caspar Schols, whose experience with the Garden House made him decide to study architecture.
This garden house was for his mother. This woman with a multitude of interests told her son she wanted a prefab pavilion in her garden, to bring together her activities in a single place. Her son Caspar immediately offered to design and build the garden house himself; he needed to stay within a 20,000-euro budget and stick to the government restriction of a 25-square-metre footprint.
His mother then handed him her long wish list for the garden house, and in four months Caspar Schols crafted a Douglas wood kit in his mother's garage, and with the help of friends he assembled it on site in two weeks; another two months were required to complete it with insulation and wood stove heating and voilà!
The garden house with a dynamic structure is 6 m wide and 4 m long - but its sliding walls mean it can be extended up to 12 metres long when desired. Caspar compares this kind of adaptability with the flexibility of changing your clothes, giving you complete freedom to do what you want on the basis of the weather or the activities going on in the garden house.
The images by photographer Jorit t'Hoen showcase the variability, and the almost playful element of this architecture much better than words. In the words of Caspar Schols "My mother is extremely happy and proud. Even before the house got all this media attention she was in love with it and she considers it a piece of art. But of course, mothers are prejudiced. They have a weak spot for everything their children do," and we bet Caspar is really happy that he could make his mother's dream come true. 

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Caspar Schols
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands
Year: 2016
Images: © Jorit t'Hoen - http://www.jorritphoto.com/

×
×

Stay in touch with the protagonists of architecture, Subscribe to the Floornature Newsletter