Aurelie Hachez (AHA) renovated a detached house on the green outskirts of Tournai. Rather than designing a new detached home, the architect set out to find an existing property which, with a few clever modifications, would perfectly meet the requirements of a young family.

A young couple’s dream of building a new, detached home in the countryside might seem like a dream job for a young architect keen to deliver a masterpiece. Things turned out quite differently with ‘Ulysse’ in the Tournai area. Although a young family with two small children was considering having a new house designed, architect Aurelie Hachez (AHA) was not interested in a new-build in a rural area. She no longer considers it responsible to erect something entirely new and, through a detached modern building, to leave a mark on an environment characterised by local, vernacular architecture. Moreover, the architect does not wish to point the finger, but rather to convey a vision of rural life and the contemporary responsibilities of her profession.