Slice Of Life

A vacant sliver lot between two houses in the red-light district of Antwerp, Belgium, may not seem like the most promising site for two architects' live-work quarters. Then again, seeing potential is what young designers are so good at. Such was the case when Sculp(it) principals Silvia Mertens and Pieter Peerlings, also partners in life, happened upon an 8-by-18-foot gap where a centuries-old merchant's house had stood before it burned down.

The adjacent buildings' brick exterior sidewalls, dry-accelerated, sealed, and painted white, became the new structure's interior walls, rough texture and all—not a precious inch wasted. Then the architects installed a four-story steel skeleton in the space between, a job that took just a month. Wires and pipes are concealed in the gap between the teak flooring of a given level and the plywood ceiling of the level below as well as in plastic tubes running inconspicuously up a sidewall.

At both ends of the top floors and the front of the bottom one, 8-by-9-foot sliding panels of seamless glass allow diffuse Flemish light to pour in through out the day. At night, colored bulbs installed right behind the glass give a nod to the neighborhood—and turn the facade into a billboard for Sculp(it)'s talents.