Project: C House
Architects: GetAway Projects
Location: Rijssen, The Netherlands
Area: 1.076 sf
Year: 2023
Photographs by: Kirsten Bos – Where She Goes
The C House, nestled in a Dutch forest, derives its name from its distinctive C shape. Divided into five areas, it features a central raised kitchen with forest views, flanked by elevated bedrooms and bathrooms. The house is clad in Corten steel, and it encloses an unheated natural swimming pool. The C shape provides both togetherness and privacy. The steel frame house has sandwich panels, with Corten steel finishing on the outer walls.
The C House, designed and built by GetAway Projects, is situated in the middle of a Dutch forest. The distinctive C shape gave name to the house. It consists of 5 spaces that each have their own function. In the middle is a raised kitchen with views to both sides of the forest. This is the central part of the house. Both ends of the C comprise elevated bedrooms with bathrooms and in between at ground level you’ll find a dining area and an intimate sitting area.
The house is clad with Corten steel (another reference to the C) and has turned into a beautiful red colour. The window sills are made of untreated Fraké wood, a thermally modified type of wood that has a beautiful and warm look and feel. Fraké wood has also been used for the interior finishing of the house. The house is enclosed by an unheated natural swimming pool with a swimming lane of 12 meters and a helophyte filter with lava stones and yellow irises for the purification of the water. The hexagonal shape comprises an inner garden in which you’ll find a raised bar directly adjacent to the kitchen with windows that open up completely to complete the bar-feeling and a raised wooden deck next to the pool.
The house is surrounded by a private forest of 5,500m2 that continues into the bigger forest around. The goal was to design a recreational house for 6 that feels cosy and sheltered at the same time, although being in the middle of the forest. With separate bedrooms and bathrooms and enough room for privacy to be able to enjoy time together but also to retreat to different parts of the house. The maximum allowed building dimensions were a height of 3m and size of 100m2.
This resulted in a house that’s only 3m wide and at the longest part 35m long but feels both spacious and private because of the C shape and the different levels of the house. The house is mostly open-plan but the bedrooms can be closed with sliding doors. The roof and walls of the steel frame house are made up of sandwich panels. They consist of two steel panels with a layer of insulating material in between. The outer walls were finished with Corten steel sheets.
