70's bungalow in Breda: a LITTLE BASTARDS® midcentury modern rework

Every so often a house comes along that does not need to be reinvented — it needs to be respected, edited and set free. This 1970s bungalow on the edge of Breda was one of them. A LITTLE BASTARDS® project, end to end.

The brief was clear. A young family of five, moving from a colourful Pippi Longstocking-style townhouse into something bigger, tougher and more open — but with soul. They found it two streets away: a generous single-storey seventies bungalow with large windows, high ceilings and a garden wrapping around the plot. Light everywhere. Character in the bones.

Keep the seventies. Kill the tired.

The whole rework was built on one rule: do not erase the seventies DNA. The slate floor stayed. The rough, white-washed structural brick — not smoothly plastered, deliberately raw — stayed. The volume, the sight lines and the connection to the garden stayed.

Everything that had aged badly went. The layout was reorganised around how this family actually lives: the kitchen and dining table now sit at the heart of the plan, where the old formal living room used to be. Life gravitates to food, conversation and the garden — not to a TV wall.

Midcentury modern, without the museum energy.

Midcentury modern is having its moment again, and there is a reason for that. Long horizontal lines, honest materials, warm woods, confident colour — it ages beautifully and it lives well. This project leans into it without turning the house into a period piece.

New moves: a bottle-green carpet that softens the plan, brushed aluminium detailing, and a custom afrormosia-wood kitchen that slots straight into the seventies vocabulary. In the bathroom, mint-green glass mosaic runs floor to ceiling. Friends called it mad. Nobody has regretted it for a second.

The garage became a wo(man)cave — a modern take on the classic conversation pit. A bespoke concrete-ciré DJ booth and a U-shaped lounge sofa, dressed in velvet cushions in seventies tones. It is deliberately the opposite of a home cinema.

An eclectic hand, not a stylist's hand.

The clients come from advertising and fashion. They know what they want and they do not colour inside the lines. An Eileen Gray side table sits next to a Kong Lamp. La Chaise by Eames shares a room with the 1968 Baseball Chair 'Joe' — almost as old as the house itself. Strict-school designers would flinch. That is the point.

A good interior carries the fingerprint of the people who live in it. Not a moodboard. Not a catalogue. This one does.

Credits.

A LITTLE BASTARDS® project. Interior design in collaboration with Inge van Prooijen (IVP Interieurarchitectuur), who supported the concept phase. Lighting in collaboration with Oerlicht. Photography by Peter Baas. As published in Stijlvol Wonen, October 2024.

If you have a house with real bones and want it edited — not erased — that is a conversation we want to have. Make a point — hello@bastards-inc.com.