One of my favourite pasttimes is popping into so- called “museum houses” — think the Rietveld-Schroder house in Utrecht, Huis Sonneveld in Rotterdam, Huis Bartolotti in Amsterdam. Huis Marseille in Amsterdam (actually a photography-based art museum) and Museum Ons Lieve Heer op Solder (actually a hidden church) also fit the bill as they functioned as homes before.

Aside from the nostalgia and being transported to another era, I always admire the singular focus on questions of how to live, in a time certainly different from our own, but perhaps not so different. In most of these homes, there was some sort of limitation, whether it was space, or funds, or materials. And seeing how these limitations were addressed, ingeniously, creatively, to create a a home which withstood the test of time.

I would never take one of those homes as a full-on template for a design, but rather borrow certain ideas, some as small as accordion walls, L-shaped curtain tracks, a bookshelf niche. Sometimes a hint is all it takes.

— Michael Camacho
 Research and Design Practice (September 2025)