Text description provided by the architects. Charroux, village of the XVIIth century part of the heritage of the most beautiful villages of France. An ancient franked fortified town, eminent point of the medieval trade shining under the air of Dukes du Bourbonnais. Today mystified, the village looks like a frozen museum where the time seems to have stopped.
A meeting, a Project, a XVIIth century barn and a knowlegde. Sharing the passion of the place throughout a restaurant combining the highlight of the country and cultural heritage. The barn is made of traditionals stones walls, three wild openings are facing the North, a clay ground and a skeleton entirely recovered with its original tiles. In the South part, a garden looking onto a street facing the city hall. A frame full of history.
To restructure the barn into a restaurant means, above all to preserve the historical environment of the place, respect what is already existing and let it live on is own. Creating openings into the southern front, inviting the light, extending the inside into the garden. It is also part of the project to confront ourselves with the conservative point of view of the STAP’s patrimonial diktat and to convince an ABF that light does not desecrate stone.
A humble and respectful attitude, free ourselves from walls and from the skeleton to interfere modestly into the space. Two bodies, the kitchen and the dining room, made of wooden supports, isolated, strongly braced and coated with plywood, are facing each other. Put down on a wooden deck and connecting the Inside to the outside, the openings of the volumes extend the differents piercings of the barn letting the ground continuing from the restaurant towards the terrace, wich is the only visible intervention you can see from the street.