Villa Henny, Huis ter Heide, Modernist villa in Huis ter Heide, Netherlands.
Villa Henny is a modernist residence in Zeist with white plastered walls and a strong geometric form. The building features long rows of windows on its east and west sides, a central fireplace, and rooms distributed across two floors in a balanced layout.
Robert van 't Hoff designed this house in 1914 and finished it in 1916 as one of the first homes in the Netherlands built with a reinforced concrete frame. The building showed how new construction methods and materials could shape residential design in a new way.
The house reflects how modernist ideas changed Dutch domestic life, bringing new ways of thinking about light, space, and how people moved through their homes. You can see this in the clear lines and open layout that made daily routines feel different from traditional dwellings.
The ground floor holds the entrance, kitchen, and a south-facing living room with plenty of light. The upper floor contains bedrooms and balconies that look out over the surrounding grounds.
The windows are lined up precisely with the load-bearing walls and concrete columns, forming horizontal bands that run across both facades at regular intervals. This careful system showed that modern building materials could look visually elegant, not just work well.
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