Live your dream in a heritage Orientalist Extravaganza in Antwerpen

Description

We both have a background in Anthropology and Asian Studies (linguistics, languages, cultures) - which is why we fell for this house in 2005, when we returned to Belgium after prolonged stays in India (Delhi, Bodhgaya), the Middle East (Damascus), and the Arabian Gulf (Muscat). Bayt al-Andalus (The Andalusian Mansion) is a house with a remarkable history. Commissioned in 1909 by a renowned Antwerpian author and editor (Joseph Buerbaum) in what was then a visionary garden city suburb, the design of its interior and gardens was given as a playground to the experimental Orientalist architect Jef Huygh (Prix de Rome 1911) - who turned the backside salons and boudoirs into Almohad palace rooms inspired by the Alhambra, and the walled garden into a faux copy of what the young Huygh had witnessed in Granada's Generalife palace. We bought the house in 2005. It took us ten years (spent on ladders redoing Almohad design motifs and Arabic inscriptions) to restore it to its former glory. It was a labor of love, that we continued later in other rooms with creative outbursts of paintwork inspired by Gaudi's Barcelona. For fifteen years we lived and worked in the house: studying, reading, writing, painting, playing music, gardening, and bringing up a child. At one time we had a rooftop farm with vegetable beds and chickens. We experimented with organic gardening and started a green revolution in the street - which is now one of the greenest streets in the whole of Antwerp. The house was also our offices and a venue for concerts, conferences, fashion shows, and photoshoots - and a few times it served as the set of a film. We hosted guest lecturers and facilitators from all over the world, and used the top-floor meeting room as a multi-functional workshop space and art cinema. We currently live in Singapore, and we cherish the idea that Bayt al-Andalus, still housing most of the original furniture and a library with some 20,000 books (mostly on Asian Studies), is being loved by kindred souls and like-minded people. Since it has served as our own "writing retreat" for so many years, it might as well serve as yours. Since it ignited us to so many creative outbursts, it might as well do the same to you. The house has three parts: (1) We have locked two rooms for an occasional sleepover when we travel in Europe, in which case we will of course notify you upfront, if and when a visit of ours occurs, we will be your silent guests occupying only the rooms of our own. (2 and 3) Yours entirely are the Lavender Room and the Green Room (two spacious bedrooms with genuine maharaja beds, and the green room has a meg-size antique bath tub). The rest of the house is open for your shared use: our former training room and study, a bathroom with walk-in shower, the kitchen, two en-suite downstairs Alhambra-like parlors (where you can dine and sit together), and the garden. The Lavender Room is only one floor up from the ground floor. It is special for its quietness and (in the summer) the fragrance of the chestnut trees in the surrounding gardens, It has an enormous canopy bed (imported from an antique shop in Jaipur), a finely carved writing desk, uniquely crafted handpainted doors, and a washbasin against Indian glass tiling. The Green Room is very special. It is two flights up, with a penthouse sort of feeling. It features another copy of a giant maharaja canopy bed and has an en-suite bathroom corner - with a huge antique stand-alone cast iron bathtub, a built-in washbasin, and an emergency toilet. The details of its decoration were done by the owners, with a unique room screen, and white doves dotting the walls, modeled after the wall paintings in Bundi Fort in Rajasthan. The cost is EUR 1500 monthly for the two rooms, and EUR 900 if you occupy only one. Amenities (gas, heating, water, electricity, 5G unlimited broadband, cleaning of commons) come at EUR 400 monthly, or EUR 200 if you live in one room only.

Private Space Offered