Villa, Enschede

2012 is in several respects an unusual architectural practice. Whereas most architects let their design determine their choice of materials, Jan Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma's design strategy is exactly the opposite: it is the local availability of materials that determines the design. The motivation behind this is their pursuit of minimal energy consumption, which translates into minimal processing and transport of materials.

Founded eight years ago, 2012 shot to prominence in 2003 with the Miele Space Station (a demountable architectural installation made from discarded dishwashers). They went on to make 7000 traffic bollards out of lorry drive shafts for the City of Rotterdam and an exhibition entitled Recycle architecture.

Villa Welpeloo is the practice's first building. The house was designed for a couple with roots in the Enschede area, in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The site is in the Roombeek district where brick factory buildings stand as a reminder that the city was once a centre of textile manufacturing.

In the 1990s, urban designer Riek Bakker produced a masterplan aimed at integrating the industrial area and the adjoining, rundown postwar residential areas, with Enschede North. When this plan was disrupted in 2000 by a firework depot explosion that destroyed part of the plan area, architect Pi de Bruin produced a revised design for the reconstruction of Roombeek. Villa Welpeloo is a stone's throw away from the place where the disaster occurred.

The very spacious dwelling (1600 m²) consists of two storeys. The ground floor is divided into three zones, which are fluidly interconnected by the continuously folded plane of blank external walls. The garage, entrance hall and a fairly formally laid-out dining/living area, are located in a north-south oriented central zone flanked on the east side by the couple's more private living spaces (kitchen and studio) and on the west by a guest suite. Upstairs, with stair and lift access, are two bedrooms, each with its own balcony and bathroom.

The clients had one special requirement for their new house: it had to have storage and display space for their collection of drawings and graphic art by contemporary young artists. The architects duly designed a 'painting machine' that is located in the heart of the villa, above the mobile dining-room table. This storage space is made from an old theatrical scenery dock that allows the clients to lower any one of thirteen vertical painting drawers (2×4 metres) to the ground floor.

The main load-bearing structure consists of sawn up steel H-sections from a textile machine. The upper floor elevations are made of pine boards from the cores of some 1000 cable drums from a neighbouring cable factory. The joints between the board ends will be protected by drip mouldings, while insulation will be provided by leftover polystyrene panels from a caravan manufacturer. For the conservatory, the architects are using glassworks offcuts, which will be attached as a scaly skin to the supporting structure.

As far as 2012 are concerned, this project will not remain a one-off showcase. In June 2005 they launched the recyclicity.net website where demand and supply of recyclable residual and scrap materials are brought together and where other model projects can be viewed. For 2012 architecten, designing is not the beginning of a self-contained linear process, but just one stage in a continuous process of creation and recreation.