For Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk, creating the home they share in Eindhoven depended on constructing an entirely new frame within the shell of an existing 19th century building. Amidst bucolic surroundings on the city’s outer edge, the Dutch design couple behind Kiki & Joost re-envisioned a once-dilapidated farmhouse through their own architectural lens, rebuilding the original space around striking core elements, developed in their workshop. “The house is a city monument,” they explain, “So we could reimagine big elements like very large windows, but the structure of the house had to remain.”

Directed by these limitations, a gradual, piece-by-piece approach contributed to the home’s quiet idiosyncrasies: “It gave us what it later would become. We like to respect the history of this place and the street and the area. Even if we could have, we didn't want to change everything”. Living in the house and allowing the ebb-and-flow of their world to guide the process identified a need to escape through their surroundings: “We want to be as much outside as possible, so [we made] an outdoor kitchen. Then we built a tree hut, a vegetable garden, and recently a pool with a very big deck. We try to create this atmosphere where it almost feels like a holiday home every day. If you’re busy at work and you come home, you can just relax, cook outside, and take a dive.”

Making room for playfulness, and the realities of living with children, they have found a unique testing ground for their product designs, adapting considered sensibilities to family life: “What we like is why we also live with our own objects – to see how it works to live with them, if we should adjust something. In some cases, whatever you make can also become a real product”. Developing the space with the same adaptability – and without rigid plans – Kiki & Joost have created a moldable, liveable environment with clear intent: “A house really needs some strong gestures in architecture and in fixed elements, but also to make very conscious choices [about] what you put in your house. Comfortable, for us, is to have space, to not stick it full with things – to be around with friends and family, to cook in a nice way and, you know, to smoke. The comfort in the house is mainly that you can do whatever you like in it.”