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Architects: NOVO architectures
- Area: 170 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:David Foessel
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Manufacturers: Hansgrohe, Alape, B&B Italia, Bette, Flos, HAY, Luceplan, Revigres
Text description provided by the architects. This Family house is built on a hill planted with pine, oak, and birch trees, at the heart of a wide natural protected area. Densely wooded, on a slope, the field is mainly non-buildable because of its listed vegetal heritage. No tree can be cut down here: the house will be built in the higher part of the glade, facing the panorama. Favoring the relationship with natural elements, the shape of the house will be invented in an inverted panoptic geometry, multiplying the views to the outside. The construction template imposed by the town planning regulations, combined with the location of the project on a steep site, guides the choice of a partially buried ground floor which limits the visual impact of the project on its environment. Having all the rooms lit on the first day defines a longhouse, openings facing the slope.
The open-angle ground plan reduces the visual impact of this length and offers interior spaces also lateral views, in particular on wooded spaces. On the forest side, a single level for the shared living spaces. A roof that follows the slope of the land shelters a great height inside space with some low views towards the large landscape in the front, some high views towards the trees at the back. On the street side, a second level for the bedrooms.
A sloping roof opposite to the first, but with a common sewer line at the back, minimizes the visual impact of the long but low back facade. Implanted in the open-angle of the house, all in length, on one level with the ground floor but detached from the natural soil, the trapezoidal terrace doubles the shared living spaces when the bay windows are open and in all seasons forms the theater of activities visible from all the rooms of the house. To anchor the pure geometry of the project in nature without weakening its rigor, the use of materials was deliberately limited to two materials with strong naturality.
Anthracite sandblasted larch cladding, mat and deep, which follows the geometry of the project through its oriented slats, sometimes placed horizontally, sometimes diagonally parallel to the slope, according to the natural movement of the ground. A light gray concrete that emphasizes the thickness of the elements, marked by random moiré patterns that will acquire a patina over time. The anthracite zinc roofs are just an extension of the wood cladding. The large glass surfaces, pure reflections of nature during the day, disappear at night.
These two highly natural materials, characterized by their assertive monochrome, reveal and magnify the natural profusion of summer greens and autumn ochres. Located in the hollow of the main fold of the house, the staircase is the point of convergence of the multiple geometric figures of the project. It involves a whole winding of plans in its upward movement, like an echo of the complex exterior vegetal architectures.
