| FAMILY HOME |
THE PLOT HAD BEEN PURCHASED, BUT IT TOOK FIVE MORE YEARS BEFORE RUTGER THEUNEN AND NICO MOLLEMAN STARTED BUILDING THEIR FABULOUS FOREST HOME
FEATURE RUTH CORBETT
Living room
Large windows with black frames emphasise the splendour of the woodland garden and encourage an inside-to-outside vibe.
HOME NOTES
Rutger Theunen, a team leader with a federal public service, lives here with Nico Molleman, a teacher at an experienceoriented elementary school, their daughter, Tsjade, four, and foster son, Rayan, nine.
A self-built two-bedroom house in Schilde, near Antwerp in Belgium, bought in 2011. The family moved in in 2018.
THE LAYOUT
Built to a hexagonal design, the ground floor features an open-plan dining, kitchen and living room with work area and cloakroom. Upstairs a central hall divides two bedrooms and two bathrooms, as well as a large storage feature.
W hencity-dwellers Rutger and Nico had a lightbulb moment during a woodland walk, a return to a slower way of life became the most important objective for them and their children. A move to the country beckoned…
WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO MOVE?
We were living in Ghent, and weren’t thinking about moving house. Then, in 2011, during a stroll in the Schilde countryside, where Rutger grew up, we came across an idyllic plot of land on the edge of a nature reserve that was for sale. Very quickly we decided to return to our roots. We wanted our children to experience an outdoorsy way of life. Although it’s in a woodland setting, the house is less than an hour’s cycle from Antwerp, where we work, and where the kids go to school. We’ve got the best of both worlds.
HOW DID THE HOUSE BUILD COME ABOUT?
After buying the plot it soon became clear that building was going to be very expensive. So we decided to save up for a few years and take our time looking for inspiration. We camped there a lot, just taking it all in. In 2015 we met architect Lieve Vermeiren (vdca.be) at a friend’s house that she had designed. It was a spacious property on a small plot, and was exactly the sort of build we were looking for.
WHAT DID YOU LOVE ABOUT LIEVE’S DESIGN?
Lieve is an outside-of-the-box thinker. Before we met her our ideas were flying in all directions, but Lieve challenged us to properly consider what we really needed and wanted. She suggested swapping the positions of the house
