Late last year, Jan Baes and Petra Decouttere of AE architects won the Dutch ARC20 Detail Award for the JJ residence in Ghent. The lion’s share of the design’s fine detailing lay in the woodwork, carried out by De Meersman joinery. We brought the architects and the contractor together around the table to discuss the future of craftsmanship in architecture. ‘Communication is everything.’

In the award-winning JJ house, it is not only the exterior and interior joinery that bears witness to meticulous detailing, but also the entirely bespoke furniture in the kitchen, the bedrooms, the library and the entrance hall. The seeds of this work were sown in the architects’ own home, where they had been experimenting for years with different types of wood and methods of incorporating wood into the interior – once again in collaboration with De Meersman joinery. “I first got to know De Meersman joinery when I was working as an intern with architect Pascal François,” says Petra Decouttere. “That collaboration was particularly instructive. When I started working at Robbrecht and Daem Architects a few years later, it turned out they were also working with De Meersman.