Altu: Inspirational design on different scales

With a great eye for detail, Veerle van de Walle and Francesca Bonne run Altu, a multidisciplinary architecture studio. As trained architects, they work on a variety of projects (residential, cultural and in hospitality), sometimes renovating or extending a building and sometimes designing it from scratch. Unique is that every building comes with a custom interior. Altu’s talented team even designs objects like lampshades.

Art & design production facilities, Rotterdam (in collaboration with Cloud). Photo: Cloud

Van de Walle and Bonne take inspiration from their extensive travels from Italy to South America. They like to visit projects by their design heroes, such as Lina Bo Bardi, who has designed many people-friendly buildings in Brazil. During the design process, Altu looks to the past and reinterprets architecture in a contemporary and sustainable way.

Altu pendant light, hand-cast resin. Photo: Mathijs Labadie

An example is when they used thatch as a facade material in a project, not only for its aesthetics but also to reduce environmental impact. For your next project, consider Altu and you’ll be sure to have a balanced design that is innovative yet steeped in tradition.

Left: Outdoor space of house in Kapellen. Photo: Depasquale+Maffini. Right: House in Kapellen, Belgium. Photo: Depasquale+Maffini.

Web: www.altu.space