In Ghent’s Zalmstraat, an old workers’ house stands with a façade just 4.5 metres wide. The original plan reads like a miniature of the nearby townhouses, providing elongated and extremely narrow living spaces. At the rear, a dilapidated extension makes the ground floor feel dark and cramped.

We demolish the longitudinal walls and introduce a refined exposed concrete column-and-beam structure that supports the upper floors. This creates a succession of facade-wide spaces of varying lengths, each two steps lower than the previous one. This cascading design creates a high, partially sunken space at the rear, where the owner can rehearse music pieces or develop visual artwork.

In the front façade, we shift the entrance ensemble towards the centre, making the underlying spatial logic visible. This allows for a double entrance door as well as space to showcase personal work to observant passers-by.