Uncover This Light-Filled, Restored Belgium Home

LOCATION Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium ARCHITECTURE & INTERIORS Benoît Viaene PHOTOGRAPHY Piet-Albert Goethals WORDS Holly Beadle

A restored family home speaks to an architect’s core values of authenticity, curiosity and obsession with how light influences materials.

Located just outside Ghent, Benoît Viaene’s latest residential project reveals little of its challenging past. “Built in the 80s, it had awkward proportions, strange details and a floorplan that didn’t match up with its structure. It was, quite honestly, one of the most unappealing homes I’ve ever worked on,” Viaene says. “On top of that, despite its location backing onto a nature reserve, the home did little to embrace its surroundings.”

The dining table, designed and made by Viaene, is crafted from African Sipo timber and intentionally left unsanded to achieve a raw, slightly uneven look. The chairs are designed by Rainer Daumiller in darkened pine.

Viaene rectified these issues by reworking the floor plan to strengthen the home’s connection to the garden, which involved extending the ground floor to create a new pitched-roof living pavilion housed within an exposed timber structure. The interiors were also completely transformed, adopting the architect’s signature “perfectly imperfect” style, characterised by fluid forms and raw materials.

The interiors showcase timber in diverse and creative applications, including the kitchen island, hand-crafted from tropical certified timber and natural shiraz stone.

A focal point of the project is the giant beech tree, which was there when the client purchased the property. “Much of the home is designed to engage with that tree, making it a natural anchor,” Viaene says. He highlights how the colour of its bark shifts with the changing seasons; as Belgium transitions into winter, the bark deepens to a rich brown, while in the warmer months, it takes on a subtle green hue. The interiors showcase wood in diverse and creative applications to pay homage to this.

Reflecting on the experimental use of wood in his projects, Viaene says, “I’m intrigued by how light interacts with the material; what kind of story does it tell?” Driven by this curiosity, the architect and self-taught craftsman employed a range of techniques to craft key elements from wood, including the kitchen island, the primary bedroom vanity and the dining table.

The floors blend gypsum and lime, while the walls and ceilings are made from pigmented clay plaster. All three are finished in a way that ensures they interact beautifully with natural light.

The dining table was crafted from African Sipo wood and intentionally left unsanded to achieve a raw, slightly uneven look. “A dining table is traditionally meant to be flat, but then how does light interact with it?” Viaene says. “The way the table is designed means you can clearly observe how light comes into contact with it while still being able to balance a wine glass on it.”

The garden becomes a living work of art throughout the home, framed by large windows and doors. This space features the Extrasoft sofa by Piero Lissoni for Living Divani, a timber coffee table from Viaene's Floating Islands collection made from African Sipo wood, a chair by Rainer Daumiller in darkened pine, and a stone sculpture by Delphine Cordie.

This fascination with light extends to other materials throughout the home. The floors, for instance, are a blend of gypsum and lime, finished to create a fluid surface rather than a perfectly flat one, allowing light to fracture beautifully across them. Similarly, the walls and ceilings are made from pigmented clay plaster rather than traditional Venetian plaster, leaving room for imperfections for the light to catch onto.

The custom vanity in the primary bedroom, which also serves as a bedhead, is made from tropical-certified wood. Raw copper deck-mounted fixtures designed by Studio Piet Boon for Cocoon feature on the vanity.

Viaene is an advocate for embracing new ideas and turning challenges into opportunities, admitting that one of the home’s standout features—the exposed-timber structure housing the new pitched-roof living pavilion—was not part of the original design but rather a creative solution to a problem.

The tub, designed by Studio LoHo, is crafted from pigmented clay plaster, echoing the same material used for the walls and ceilings. A PB SET11 basin mixer by Studio Piet Boon for Cocoon is located in a plaster recess, complemented by an additional hand shower, both finished in raw copper.

At its core, Viaene and his team wanted the home to be a place where their client and their three teenage sons could live fully. “I wanted it to be beautiful—of course, but more importantly, I wanted it to feel functional and deeply lived-in,” Viaene says. He believes they accomplished just that, creating a space that has become the backdrop for lively social gatherings and many family dinners.

The exposed-timber structure housing the new pitched-roof living pavilion, with its dark-stained finish, harmonises with the surrounding garden.

The giant beech tree is a natural anchor, shaping much of the home’s design.