Underground Picnic Underground vacation dwellings in Zeeland


Is it possible to offer all the vacation-goers that come to Zeeland a place to stay without ruining what they came for, the landscape and the emptiness?
The solution seems obvious: an underground vacation villa. A house that hardly influences the landscape, if at all. A concrete basin of 25 x 14 meters that only occasionally rises above the ground plane, and no more than 90 cm. The size of the house compensates for the absence of a view to the horizon. The car disappears underground as well. The house includes a long hallway, a large kitchen and a living space that can incorporate the patio through fully opening king doors.

The villas are not concentrated in closed enclaves but dispersed throughout the existing landscape. In the polders they form orderly rows, while in the older landscape they are situated in the margins, along forgotten plots of the re-parcellation. In the woods they are scattered, with a villa here and there as if they were trees. The program of the ground plane is independent of the presence of the
villa. Depending on the context, the view from the bath might be a cornfield, an old beech tree or a curious cow.

Jasper de Haan Architecten
Client: Het Zeeuwse Gezicht
Location: Zeeland, the Netherlands
Year: 1999
Size: 350 m2

See also: www.Architectenwerk

with Martin Fierloos