The Buddhist organisation Metta Vihara asked the architects to create as much space as possible within the modest budget.

"What we wanted was an aesthetic that was beautiful but not too comfortable," architect Peter van Assche told Dezeen. "The reason people go to the meditation centre is not to feel cosy – they want to go deeper, to sense something that is not too obvious. The feeling of the building should express this."

The resulting building provides beds for 26 people in 13 bedrooms as well as a meditation hall, library and dining hall.

A mansard roof was chosen as a cost-effective way of providing extra living space while also borrowing from the vernacular architecture of Zeeland, which is near the Belgian border.

Three colours of corrugated steel have been used for the facades and roof, with red cedar beams marking the top and bottom edges of each steel sheet.

The square Velux windows have been fitted inside white wooden frames to disguise ugly joints with the steel.

The end walls are clad in wood salvaged from scaffolding left over by the builders.

At one end of the building is a large meditation room with glazed walls and corrugated steel shutters, which open out onto a view of the rural landscape.

Inside, bare limestone has been used for the load-bearing walls while the other walls are made from environmentally certified MDF.

Polished concrete has been used on all the floors with the exception of the meditation hall, which is covered with black bamboo.

The architects added: "The building has been warmly received by local residents, as evident in a conversation we heard between two passing cyclists: 'This new cowshed looks really good, but why does it have so many windows?'"

We've featured two other Buddhist buildings on Dezeen – a house for a priest along the Shikoku pilgrimage route in Japan and a priest's quarters in the Japanese Alps.

Site plan – click above for larger image

We previously published Bureau SLA's National Glass Museum Holland in Leerdam, which saw two houses connected by four overlapping bridges wrapped in aluminium mesh.

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

See all our stories from the Netherlands »
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See all our stories about places of worship »

First floor plan – click above for larger image

Photographs are by Jeroen Musch.

Here's some further information from the architects:

The Buddhist Meditation Centre Metta Vihara is located in Hengstdijk – a small village near the Belgian border – in a remote area of the Netherlands. The inhabitants of Metta Vihara (defined as 'community of loving kindness' in the Pali language) are members of the Triratna Community, a Buddhist movement not aligned to one traditional school, but one that draws on the whole stream of Buddhist inspiration.

Long section – click above for larger image

The new accommodation provides 26 beds in 13 one- and two-person bedrooms, a meditation hall, library and dining hall. Form and materials used in the centre relate to the rural vernacular building, but used in a new and fresh way.

As the centre is financed mainly by gifts from community members and friends, one of the design briefs was to maximise the the space while minimising the cost. Our overall design concept was to design a building that, while beautiful, wasn’t overly comforting. This is in line with the philosophy that, while on retreat, one should feel relaxed but not necessarily 'at home'. As a result, Metta Vihara has strong aesthetics that feature robust and raw materials.

Long section – click above for larger image

The overall form of the meditation centre is an interpretation of the so-called Mansard roof, also known as the French roof. Used throughout the area (mainly because of its low cost), the Mansard roof is found widely on houses and barns. The facade of the centre – along with the cladding of the roof – is made of corrugated steel, a material popular for its low cost, strength, and long life. Typically, the drawback of using corrugated steel is in the ungraceful way it joins with other materials, specifically at the corners and in the overlays. At Metta Vihara, however, it has been used 'as is': no joints and no connections. Western red cedar beams and white wood window frames mark the transitions from one steel sheet to the next, with the horizontal lines of the beams giving the building depth and profile. Three different colors of steel are used, and in three different wavelengths. Indeed at first sight, it is not at all clear what the scale of the building is: does it have five floors? Three? Two?

Cross section A

The same approach of using raw materials in this new way is also used in the design of the windows. The windows in the steel skin – in facade and roof – are standard Velux windows, which are technically superb and relatively inexpensive. As with the corrugated steel, however, there is often an aesthetic compromise in the joints with other materials. In the case of Metta Vihara, though, they are framed with white painted wood, giving them a distinctive look.

Cross section B

As a contrast to the more industrial looks of the steel, the short sides of the building and the terrace walls are cladded with wood, a robust but also warm material. For this, wood already available on site was used: the leftovers of the scaffolding wood used by the builders. The structure's interior consists of unfinished building materials, albeit used in a considerate – even delicate – way.

Structural walls are bare unplastered lime stone. Floors are raw concrete, polished and uncovered, with the exception of the meditation hall, which features black bamboo flooring. Non-loadbearing walls are made of ecologically manufactured MDF sheets and are coated with transparent colours, in order that the structure of the material remains visible.

Cross section C

In the meditation hall, doors open to the outside, allowing open air meditation. When closed, these doors - made of perforated corrugated steel – serve to filter the sunlight. This gives the space an intimate atmosphere, providing optimal conditions for meditation. The building has been warmly received by local residents, as evident in a conversation we heard between two passing cyclists: "This new cowshed looks really good, but why does it have so many windows?" The Metta Vihara building is the first newly built meditation centre in the Netherlands.

Cross section D

Project: Buddhist Meditation Centre Metta Vihara
Start design: 2009
Start building: 9/2011
Opening: 6/2012
Gross Area: 465 m2
Building costs: ca. €650,000 ex. VAT
Design: bureau SLA
Client: Metta Vihara
Address: Hengstdijkse Kerkstraat 36, Hengstdijk, The Netherlands
Program: 13 bedrooms, meditation hall, library and dining hall
Contractor: Van Kerckhoven Bouw, Kloosterzande
Structural Engineer: Sineth Engineering, Schiphol
Sustainability: Sunraytec, Woerden
Project team: Peter van Assche, Hiske van der Meer, Gonçalo Moreira, Charlotte Vermaning, Justyna Osiecka

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by Bureau SLA appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch studio architecten|en|en have created a home office in Eindhoven by wrapping a garage in corrugated aluminium.

Tiny perforations pierce this ridged metal exterior to make it partially see-through.

Daylight filters into the room through a south-facing skylight that separates the new and existing roofs.

Shutters fold back from the facade to reveal sliding glass doors that lead onto a projecting platform outside.

The refurbished garage is now named Studio R-1 and is used as a workplace for a furniture designer.

Other interesting buildings on Dezeen clad in corrugated metal include an artists studio in Australia, a steel-clad gallery and studio in France and a film storage bunker in England.

Photography is by Post & Van Leeuwen.

Here's a few more words from the architects:

Studio R-1

A Villa build for a former Philips executive in a green suburb of Eindhoven named ‘Schuttersbosch’ gave designer Hugo de Ruiter the perfect possibility to combine living and working with the existing indoor garage used as studio space.

“I don’t want to feel like I am working in my garage” was the main goal of the assignment. The solution was found in adding a mask-shaped volume to the existing garage. By covering this with a perforated corrugated aluminium skin  as mono material for the walls and the roof, a subtle continuation of the clay-roofing of the existing home arises. A  collar of galvanized steel that acts as a terrace boundary highlights the disengagement of existing and new.

On the interior the addition provides extra floor-space and height. An abundance of daylight can enter the studio through a south faced strip of glass dividing the addition from the existing roof.

Architect: architecten|en|en
Location: Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Client: Hugo de Ruiter Design
Project year: 2011

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Australian firm Open Studio have completed a small artists' studio shared between two properties in Flemington, Australia.

Called Artist Studio, the building contains a studio, store room, garden shed and a garage.

It is located between two residences whose occupants removed their boundary fence to create a larger, shared garden.

The studio is clad in corrugated steel and rests on a concrete base.

The distorted square plan defines three distinct exterior spaces: a playground, a vegetable garden and an outdoor sitting area.

Here's some text from the architects:

--

This small project is located at the rear of two houses in Flemington - a suburb  of Melbourne. The two properties' owners decided some time ago to remove the boundary fence to create a shared back garden.The resulting garden is unusually wide and surprisingly large - space enough for a range of activities.

The main question for this project was how to place the new building to the open quality of the site while defining three landscape areas in the garden(playground, vegetable garden, outdoor sitting) A pragmatic rectangular shape was deformed to follow the site specific conditions. The angular geometry hep to define the landscape zones.

The project's brief was a combination of four different functions: a painting studio, a large store room, a garden shed and a garage. These four functions require to be independently used and need strong "internal" quality. Like four inner rooms protected from the outside these spaces are somehow hidden and disengaged for the exterior, their functions become indistinguishable format the outside.

The result is a strong distinction between interior and exterior. The interior is a white neutral space with various gradations of natural light.

In contrast, the exterior acquires an object-like artificial quality. Its material expression is abstracted by the careful location of he openings, the reduction of materials and concealment of construction requirements. Contact with the ground is accentuated by exposing the edge of the concrete slab.

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