Kazemat Koningsweg
Arnhem, Netherlands
A small holiday house from 2024, one of eleven follies built in the woods of a former German wartime base north of Arnhem, a site once camouflaged as a farming village to hide it from the air. The building borrows only the name of a bunker: it is new, made by cutting the floor into the ground and folding the landscape up over it, so a grassed roof rises at 33 degrees under 20 centimetres of heath while the open face is closed with frameless mirror glass, hiding the house a second way, by reflection.
You get in by lifting a steel hatch lying in the heath and climbing down into one tall room glazed on three sides, lined in birch plywood, with a wood stove. An angled column pierces the roof and the glass to house animals at three heights: a den at the ground, cavities for birds above, space for bats at the top. The architects built it for themselves and rent it out, and it was shortlisted for a Dezeen Award in 2025 and included in the Dutch architecture yearbook.
JCR Architecten
A four-person Arnhem office founded by Jeroen Helder, with its studio on the same former military estate as this house. The practice works from interiors up to housing, grounded in timber, biobased and nature-inclusive building.
Architecture JCR Architecten (@jcrarchitecten). Photography Sebastian van Damme (@svd_fotografie). Seen via @micro.homes.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.