Samir Alaoui Architectes: Conversion of a workers’ villa from the 1940s - best architects 23
Samir Alaoui Architectes: Conversion of a workers’ villa from the 1940s - best architects 23

Samir Alaoui Architectes

Conversion of a workers’ villa from the 1940s

best architects 23

renovation and addition

Place

Lausanne, Switzerland

Photos

Tonatiuh Ambrosetti

Description

The project is a conversion of a workers’ villa from the 1940s, part of a protected complex of identical houses built for national railway company workers. The house originally had one habitable floor and a lower level consisting of a cellar and a garage. The two existing floors can be accessed from the outside. The intervention created a bedroom and a studio on the lower level, coupled with a new entrance space that reorganises the vertical circulation and gives access to both levels of the house. In order to achieve the necessary height for the new living spaces, the floor of the lower level had to be excavated. Multiple windows were added and existing windows enlarged. The difference in height gained in both the bedroom and studio is marked by a finish of sand-wash concrete, so as to retain traces of the original level. The finishes of the new floor spaces as well as those of the entrance were also executed in sand-wash concrete. In contrast to the concrete finish chosen for the floor and the lower part of the walls in the bedroom and studio, the entrance space was made from wood frames. Its burnt wood façades stand out from the original volume of the house.