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A Modern Extension on a Row House From 1900

Owners of a row house built in 1900 reached out to Ruud Visser Architecten to design a one-story extension on the back that resembled their neighbors. After taking a look, the architects realized that the lack of space was present on the upper sleeping level and not so much on the ground floor. So, they proposed to stretch the home’s two floors by two meters (6.5 feet), which paved the way for two average sized children’s rooms.

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In order to bypass the strict building regulations, they wrote a letter to the mayor and city council members to persuade them to allow an extension that was higher than three meters. They agreed after realizing it would blend better with the original neighboring houses, as the Stretched House is one of six in a row.

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The house sits on the Delftweg in Rijswijk, Netherlands where the houses tend to be cottage style, typical for the time period. The front facades on the six houses remain pretty much the same, while the back vary a bit as people have cluttered them with storage sheds. While it’s a modern extension, they kept the lines of the structure the same pitched-style roof line as the others.

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Instead of using a lot of smaller windows, they chose one large window that’s divided into four parts by a cross-shaped wooden frame (this isn’t the first chapel-themed home that RV has done – check out this converted church).

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While the upstairs saw two new bedrooms, the ground level extension made way for a kitchen with a dining room.

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The modest-sized kitchen is simple and efficient with plenty of storage behind the wood-faced cabinets.

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Photos by René de Wit.

Caroline Williamson is Editor-in-Chief of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and can usually be found searching for vintage wares, doing New York Times crossword puzzles in pen, or reworking playlists on Spotify.