Atelier Martel

Description

This corner building, constructed for Immobilière 3F, embodies a stance that is like a game playing with the essential questions of materiality, light, scale and proportion. Replacing an old house with the figurehead that the crossroads had been waiting for, the new building is very simply composed of an aligned main body and a double-height attic, an explicit reference to the artists’ studios that gave modernist Boulogne its reputation. Set in a heterogeneous built environment, it softens the contrasts and weaves a strong, peaceful relationship with Boulogne’s architectural history. The building offers an in-depth study of materiality, a contemporary and poetic vision of simple stonework where the direct expression of the structure is magnified by the play of shadows created by the folds and modelling of the façade. The project reinterprets these fundamentals from a pragmatic ecological perspective, with economy of means, the proper use of materials and the climatic quality of the homes as its compass. Thanks to its solidity and high degree of inertia, load-bearing stone makes a significant contribution to the summer comfort of the apartments, which are also well-ventilated because they are all floor-through or corner-hung and feature effective solar protection thanks to louvres that fold nicely into the stone panels. Sourced from the Clocher quarry in Bonneuil-en-Valois, Oise, the load-bearing stone façade improves the structure’s carbon footprint while boosting the regional economy.