In 2012, the heirs to a country house commissioned the Ghent-based practice Gafpa (Floris De Bruyn, Philippe De Berlangeer, Frederick Verschueren) to carry out the renovation. The architects oversaw the project right through to the construction phase. The clients are DIY enthusiasts through and through and completed the structural work themselves.

It matters not that the crops surrounding the country house are genetically modified. It is a beautiful sight. There is a certain desolation about the place. The melancholy of a once-magnificent house in its former glory, ravaged by the relentless passage of time. A bad investment, a loan negotiated too hastily, and the wind carrying everything away. As Louis-Ferdinand Céline said in *Death on Credit* (1936): ‘Children are like years; we never see them again.’