Peristilio | B2A Architects

Peristilio is a 60m2 home extension that includes the enlargement of the living room, enhancing the connection between interior living spaces and the home’s garden. Designed in response to the client’s wish for a compact, but spacious home extension the sensitively responded to the site conditions.

Located in the Dutch province of Utrecht, The Netherlands, B2A drew inspiration from further afield, with a perimeter colonnade structure. This recollects a Roman peristilio blurring the line between garden, terrace, and the interior, while still presenting a modern structure that reconciles with the local built environment.

Moving from outside, inside, this sheltered but open perimeter corridor serves as a transitional step, unifying the new rear brick and concrete facade with a rhythmic cohesion created by the repetition of the columns. The outspoken illumination concept extends the shadows on the columns to enhance the theatricality of the terrace.

The fluid interior-exterior space that this terrace creates functions as a room bound by three faces, with its fourth face being the immediate connection to the garden. Moving through the extension from the living room facilitates a tranquil but cadenced transition from indoors to outdoors.

Materials reinforce the transition. White stucco walls and a concrete floor, as well as a wooden inbuilt book closet, create a quietly elegant background giving centre stage to the experience of indoors meeting outdoors. Facade materials are equally subdued with the peristilio’s nuanced mix of brick and concrete communicating both solidity and timelessness, in step with the extension’s Roman inspiration.

Frames around window and sliding door openings have a stone-grey aluminium profile, blending in with the total composition, as well as being a robust and high performing material.

“A person’s home is their palace. Peristilio’s colonnade’s curvilinear outdoor ‘room’, which references Italian pallazos, lends elegance and sophistication to what could be a very ordinary extension.” - B2A Founding Partner, Tjerk Boom

As an extension, Peristilio presents an opportunity to improve the energy performance of the existing dwelling. Triple-glazed windows, solar panels on the roof, and distributed in-floor heating mitigate additional heating costs, and improve the dwelling’s total performance.

Lead Architects: Louise Bjørk and Tjerk Boom

Photography: MWA Hart Nibbrig (https://www.mwahartnibbrig.com/)