41 Pim's Guesthouse & Ceramic Studio

Pim is a good friend of mine. She is a designer, mostly working with clay that then becomes ceramic. We ran fun design workshops together in the past few years sucn as "the place and the plate" and "consumption R us". Pim also teaches at the same school as I do, in Industrial Design Department.

Around mid 2007, Pim asked me if I wanted to help her to transform an almost abandoned 50-year old wooden house of her husband's family into a guesthouse and a gathering space for her friend from the church. Although I was sure that it would not be an easy job, because of Pim and the fun of working with her always, I said yes right away. The result was very satisfied and the experience of working with her through almost 18 months was very nice and fun. :-)





This was an eary stage of dismantling the house. Basically the house has two parts: the 2 storey is the main house where Pim's husband lived when he was a child, the 1 storey was a maid quarter and a kitchen, this part we transformed it into a pavillion for all kind of gathering activities.



The pavillion. We took off all the walls, give some light through the roof..adjusting the ground around to meet the pavillion's activities. The main house was completely dismantled, only the columns remained - however they needed to be reinforced with steel structure. The roof was totally renewed with a new steel structure. We also added the under roof room as a storage. This is the main hall of the second floor.


We kept all the walls, doors and windows, trying to reuse them as much as possible - thanks to our super high skill carpenters who could keep most of the existing parts in a very good condition. After the existing color was peeled off, we all fell in love with the 'wabi-sabi' look of the surface. Pim also loves the idea to keep it like that...


These are the walls that we like very much..


Pim and mo.


The real owner of the house, Mo. He is pleased when people visit his house. :-)


Our veranda space on the second floor, we can't help to sit on the ground and lay down on the floor.. look at Mo.


While the main house was almost completed, Pim was looking at the remainers of walls and windows everyday and got this idea to use the remainers to building her ceramic studio in the back of her garden. There were a lot of wood.. it would be a pity to thrown them away or keep them with0ut knowing exactly what to do.


We ran a small workshop with Pim to design her studio for one afternoon. :-) Great fun.


We made a model of all windows and doors...Recomposed them into a facade of the studio...


It was very simple rectangular building.. but we had a great fun working on it.


Finally.. this is how it looks (thanks to Pom for such a nice photo).



Windows and door recomposed..


Interior space..




This is where Pim works and spends most of her good time. :-)


Pim and her studio..

Well it is a very small project. But we are very happy working on it and very happy with the result! This confirms that good work comes with also good client :-)