An artist's studio in Rotterdam was put together from the debris of neighbouring buildings. The kitchen floor is laid with broken blue stone from a church in Brabant. The floor and the washbasin in the bathroom are made from old mooring piles from the Port of Rotterdam. The marble on the thresholds and windowsills used to be a fireplace in an old Rotterdam house.
The space is on the ground floor of a late 19th-century house and stood empty for several years, used as a storeroom. There was little money, so Overzee used standard and second-hand materials and looked for them as close by as possible. The same church stone later went onto the facade too.
The office calls its approach "zero kilometre" (Km.0): build from what is available nearby and lean on the local building culture. That is where the fireplace comes from. The English project description calls it simply "ordinary", while the Dutch one specifies that it is a traditional schouw from an old house in another part of Rotterdam.
Outside, the main job was removing the 1990s shopfront. It had been fitted at some point with no regard for the rhythm and material of the historic facade, even though the street is protected. The new entrance has natural stone and profiles matched to the neighbouring houses. The aim was that a passer-by would assume it had always been there.
Inside, everything hangs on one curved line: the stairs up to the sleeping level turn into a wall with the same curve. A two-storey curtain runs along it. When it is open, light reaches the works from both sides. When it is closed, the bedroom and kitchen are screened off from the studio.
