New Narratives for Existing Houses in Flanders, Belgium: Exploring the Discourse on Retrofitting Dwellings

Giving Flemish houses more than one possible future

In this article, we explored how the extensive stock of detached houses in Flanders might be given new futures. Postwar policy created a landscape of privately owned, often spacious homes in low-density and peri-urban settings. These houses are closely tied to ideals of independence and family life, yet they also contribute to land consumption, car dependence, ecological pressure and a rigid housing market. At the same time, ageing, population growth and smaller households are changing what people need from a home.

Our work sits within the project ‘Large underused dwellings in Flanders’. We asked whether existing homes and neighbourhoods could be used more effectively through diversification, densification and landscape restructuring. Rather than treating demolition or new construction as the default answer, we looked at retrofitting, sharing, subdivision and other careful transformations. The task is difficult because these houses are durable in material terms but slow to change socially and spatially, shaped by strong traditions of ownership and building culture.

Using design teaching as a way to investigate

A design studio at Hasselt University became our main experiment. Forty master’s students in Interior Architecture and Architecture worked in groups on ten representative detached houses. They tested how homes built for one conventional family might accommodate two smaller households. We did not impose a preferred outcome. Students engaged with opposing positions, from minimal interventions that preserve the dwelling to more radical changes that redefine how it works.

A matrix of four dwelling types and three briefs structured the work: two small households sharing a home, a household combining care and caregiving, and a reconstituted family with changing occupation. Through sketches, comparisons and design logbooks, students recorded both their proposals and the reasoning, uncertainty and decisions behind them. Those logbooks became qualitative material for the wider research.

For us, this is also a methodological contribution. Design education can support architectural research without turning students into unpaid assistants or forcing them towards one conclusion. Students retained authorship, while their documented thinking exposed the opportunities and limits of retrofitting. The resulting new narratives suggest that detached houses are not simply obsolete remnants of sprawl. With context-sensitive change, they can become adaptable places for sharing, care and changing forms of household life.