Cabrio House
Meise near Brussels, 1988-1992

A house in the countryside on the edge of a forest and open fields. The house stands at the north-side of the forest so the idea was to build high _ and capturing as much as possible afternoon sun. It's what you call a 'dingbat' with an open carport beneath.
The name Cabrio relates to the Cobra movement which brought together a group of painters, poets, a single Dutch architect called Aldo van Eyck during a brief period in the 1950's. The Cobra movement experimented with distortions, was very colourful, very expressionistic. There source was children's drawings or the paintings of mentally handicapped - anything remote from either academic [...]or abstract painting. (fig.)
Distortions also sit in our design, in the sense of experiments in scale, given the oversized bay window, the tall vertical line of the exterior chimney, or in the way the cube (containing living, sleeping rooms) is plugged into the cylinder(s) with sanitary functions (kitchen, bathroom, storage) and with the circulation shaft standing out of the center.
The terrace room with awning, has a polyester copula on top, again to let sunlight fall into the inner staircase.
There are other elements engaged : of rational style, of modern style.
A catalyst was the analysis I had made on bowed planes _ Chapel of Ronchamp designed  by the French architect LeCorbusier compared with Hadrianus chapel in ancient Rome. (fig. Ronchamp model & Hadrianus).
The name Cabrio (another word for convertible) relates then also to Le Corbusier's 1920 Citrohan type - a house named after a type of car. (fig).