The paintings of Francis Bacon are a distortion of reality. Bacon's work is about extreme isolation - by which is meant the internal aspect of isolation. The urban villas came about by rendering these paintings as a three-dimensional experience. It is a game played between mass and void, between heavy and light, between investing in peace of mind, and an indictment of reality.

Mass and void are invariably linked. For each 'empty space' there are 'spaces in the mass'. Void is always bounded by mass. The balance between the two is different every time.

One villa is comprised of several dwellings. A dwelling is a unit, this is the 'void', with attached to it a block of services, the 'mass'. The unit is a large empty space with no function allocated to it. The mass is a concatenation of facilities and a labyrinth of passages, stairs and lifts. Residents walk through the dwelling programme as if through a long corridor hewn from a rock. The transition from 'void' to 'mass' is a border drawing together two worlds or instead hammering home the difference between them. Each dwelling is individual, there is nothing collective about it. Each has its own entrance, its own garage, its own lift. All are accessed from the villa's labyrinthine routeing system. In the Amsterdam villa this system links the boathouse to the helicopter platform on the roof. Each dwelling type is different. The villa in Amsterdam is comprised of a family house, a studio house, a senior citizen's house and a penthouse. The surface area on average is 500 m2. These villas might be found in every metropolis. Their occupants are city dwellers who exhibit similarities in whichever major city they live. They opt for the urban life so as to have at their disposal the services a city has to offer. Life in their house and life in the city are complementary. The site in Amsterdam is Houthavens, an industrial area north-west of Central Station, where the horizontally-aligned villa stands along the water. Houthavens in its present state weds well with Francis Bacon, in that it is raw, non-conformist and extreme.

Paris, Amsterdam or New York. Berlin, Buenos Aires or Barcelona. In all the villas isolation and individualism are the main thrust. Which is why I refer to Bacon's paintings. He distorts reality, so as to bring a more deep-rooted reality into view.

Place of education: Amsterdam
Specialization: architectuur/architecture
Tutors: Bjarne Mastenbroek, Peter Defeche & Ton Schaap