(Full) Scale Architecten, Genealogy of the facades 1919-2006. Fotohuis Leuridan, Family Pauwelyn, Elzendamme Vleteren 1957. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

This project started last summer. I was inheriting the farm of my grandparents, where I had spent lots of summer days in the orchard and rainy days in the hayloft. It still is an idyllic location but the building is a ruin. However, the memories are lively, and triggered my curiosity. How did my grandparents organize their daily activities in these spaces? How did my grandfather refurbish the house when it was passed down to him? And, thinking of the house where I grew up: did my father incorporate any of his childhood memories into the design his own house? And what about my mother: did she also influence the make-up of the house, and did she incorporate her own family background?
The idea grew to build a genealogy of my families’ homes over the generations, to investigate how each generation shaped their own home from their experiences and aspirations. I started with my own home and went on to interview both my parents trying to draw plans of their childhood houses and the houses of their grandparents. While they described to me the position of the rooms, the views, the materials, and the decorations, I got insights in the stories that go with these rooms, the house, their home. Later local community officials provided me with a copy of the original plans.
So now we have the floor plans tell their stories and their evolution on the one hand, whereas the narratives of the spaces extracted from the interviews can be illustrated and allocated a position on the plans, on the other hand. Eventually I spanned the four generations from my grandparents, over my parents, my husband, down to the experiences of my children. The result is a narrative of experiences and spaces through time.
Some spaces moved on from one house to the other. Others are lost over the generations. What spatial remnants of forgotten rituals are passed down the generations? As an example, the kitchen finds its place between two poles over the generations. For my father’s branch, the stove took a central position in the living space. My mother’s branch lived with a maid whose domain was the kitchen, and where threshold spaces clearly marked that domain. Down the line, my own house has the kitchen as a clear entity, but with permeable boundaries. It has its own distinct domain while drawing in the center of living. The family story can also explain the shift of the bathroom to the back of the house, and the importance given to raised ceilings. My grandfather combined here his medical background with his experience of living on a farm. These two examples are still only an illustration of the richness of stories passed down in the bricks and mortar of the family houses.
As an architecture office, we often design reconversions for family homes. How people live, where they come from, what their aspirations are to improve, what they like: all these inspire us as much as the history embedded in the architecture of the old house they just acquired. Listening closely to our clients’ stories helps us understand their history of living, similar to the genealogy project. Presenting them our design drawings forms the basis to discuss how their habits and past experiences can enter a next iteration in their own architectural genealogy of home.