Maharaja feeling: the Green Room in a heritage Orientalist Extravaganza

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, 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. We offer two packages: The Green Room and The Lavender Room. For each package you have your own private room to retreat into - and you share our former training room as a shared working space, 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. You are currently viewing the Green Room page. For the Lavender Room, copy/paste this link into your browser: https://www.sabbaticalhomes.com/rental/158775. The Green Room is very special. It is two flights up, with a penthouse sort of feeling. It has an enormous canopy bed (imported from an antique shop in Jaipur) and houses a huge antique stand-alone cast iron bathtub and old 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. Optionally (and if you are lucky) you can take both rooms and it will be as if the house is yours entirely.

Private Space Offered