Terraced self-builds in Leiden

Twenty kilometers northwards from The Hague lies the historic university town of Leiden where 24 houses are being built by their plot owners next to a former school that is being converted into shell apartments. A compact self-build scheme on the former school yard. 

One of the young self-builders, Eline, invited the team of Orchard Farm to tour the house she had designed and built with her boyfriend Roeland. Eline studied interior architecture and Roeland is an architect and they had a good idea of what they wanted to build before they knew which plot they would buy. They had used Sketch Up, a basic tool to visualise their design and built the house with Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), a multi-layer glued wood that is so dense that you don't need steel and concrete, except for the foundation. It is also very quick to build a house with it.  

House of CLT timber

Eline is rightly proud of the interior design. She told us, “I think it's really cool that we have succeeded in giving rooms a dual function. We don't have just a corridor or a hall anywhere; traffic and usage areas coincide. For example, if you want to go from the toilet to the dining room, you walk through the kitchen. We have also incorporated sliding doors which offers us the possibility of different room configurations.” 

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Development Partners

Steenvlinder
Urbanise

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