Longhouse farm Zunderdorp: preservation as a starting point
When Bastiaan Jongerius Architecten took on a house at the edge of Zunderdorp, the obvious route was ready and waiting: demolish the existing cottage from 1970 and start fresh. The studio chose a different path. The cottage stayed standing, and that single decision became the engine behind the entire design process. Every step that followed, from the first sketches to the final detail, took its cue from what was already there and the qualities hidden within it.
The result is a longhouse farm, a typology that has belonged to the Waterland landscape for centuries. A new building envelope was wrapped around the existing volume, insulated in an energy neutral, biobased way, preparing the house for the future without losing its original character. Inside, the existing timber roof structure, now exposed, sets the tone for the whole interior.
The setting in the polder, with wide views over flat meadows and glinting ditches, and the black barns that mark that landscape, guided the design. The openings in the long facades align with one another, letting sightlines from the landscape run uninterrupted into the house. The same logic continues inside: the openings in the interior walls line up too, so the view from within reaches, through the windows in the gable ends, all the way to the village church and the polder beyond.
Inside, voids connect the floors spatially and open views to the existing roof structure, which becomes the heart of the house. Outside, concrete elements set into the plinth, angled to catch the sun at different times, give the yard informal seating and invite everyday use of the outdoor space.
The material choices follow the typology. Low maintenance was a firm requirement for the longhouse farm, which led to blackened accoya with a pronounced grain, alternated with black standing seam metal panels. The plinth is concrete, chosen for the damp ground.
The inspiration for the design came not so much from other Dutch houses, but from barns in the Alps: buildings with a clear primary form, a legible structure, and openings that run straight through the volume, tying the building inseparably to its landscape. That same clarity shows up in Zunderdorp, where a small, overlooked cottage has grown into a home that doesn't sit beside the landscape, but right in the middle of it.
