The stripped-out ground floor of a 1960s villa forms the core of a new family home in FlandersThis project was shortlisted in the 2024 AR House awards. Read about the full shortlist hereVMVK II lies low in an affluent cul-de-sac in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, a bucolic commuter town in Belgiums Flemish region. Designed by Mechelen-based practice dmvA for clients VM and VK the family house is ideally situated along Belgiums major industrial and urban axis: 25 kilometres north is the port of Antwerp; the nations capital is a 50-minute drive south. Across the street is VMVK I: the clients previous home (and their second architect-designed new build), commissioned from dmvA 12 years before. A white zinc-clad barn with a multi-faceted roof profile, the original VMVK was envisioned as an icon in nature, designed to turn inward and stand out against the green. The couples requests for their newest residence, however, rendered the opposite image: light-flooded spaces and maximum connection with nature.VMVK II is one of few private homes in dmvAs recent portfolio. For the past decade, the practice has held a consistent focus on the urban, with most of their projects concentrated in Mechelen. By our definition, the city is the only environment where you can actually build sustainably, explains Tom Verschueren, one of the practice founders. As such, dmvAs latest projects have sought to liberate underutilised urban sites through perceptive, economic interventions, working into the existing to more efficiently and generously accommodate density, often for public clients.Met with a proposal from their former patron and an unremarkable 1960s summer home on their just-purchased plot of land dmvA sought to maintain something of their approach within the inherent parameters of the brief, bringing the clients round to updating the material on site rather than knocking down and building new as planned. While the basement and ground floor of the existing structure provided the foundations for dmvAs design, the former is unrecognisable in its successor, enclosed in reflective glazed walls. A staircase of concrete floor slabs extends its footprint outward on all four sides, each rising to offer the privacy required by the internal spaces, while minimising the impact on the soil below. The white-painted finish of the original house has been preserved and additions are differentiated in black, allowing the house to recede into its surroundings.As if in preparation for the clients next move, the architects designed the custom CLT frame of the house so it could be dismantled and reused. But rather than their reincarnation in VMVK III, Verschueren has civic aspirations for the timber elements: I hope that they will return to the city that we will get the opportunity to give them purpose in an urban context.The client, for their part, sees their future residence being an altogether different house. Well only live this way for another 10 years or so, VM explains. We want somewhere smaller and easier to maintain as we enter the later stages of life. Within the scope of the brief, though, the architect Verschueren sees his duties as having been achieved. Sometimes we have clients who want to sit on soil. But this was a high-budget house, with metropolitan owners. If Im honest, a more realistic hope is that the design gives more people a sense of responsibility around sustainability. For us, that was the design task. Whether or not dmvAs efforts persuade the couple to deviate from past behaviour, the architect and his client have, together, made progress.