SAPIENS Architectes & CO-PRA

Description

This project proposes a discourse on the form and the durability of common, ordinary architecture. And more exactly on its ability to adapt, evolve and transform. Not everything is a monument. But everything is heritage. Each existing element deserves to be explored with attentiveness. At the beginning, the project consisted of the total destruction of the existing building in order to erect a new house. The outdated building was characterized by a superposition of heterogeneous architectural elements. We therefore answered this initial desire to destroy everything by proposing to preserve the essential while bringing through our architectural intervention a spatial clarification and creating a new relationship with the landscape. 

 

Optimizing the landscape 

The house is surrounded by various equestrian farms. We decided to use this natural setting as the fourth façade in all rooms and to extend the landscape into the interior spaces, like a backdrop evolving with the passage of time and seasons. 

 

The clarification of space 

Similar to a Greek stoa, our radical intervention allows through architectural inclusion a new global reading of the overall scheme. It becomes the spatial extension of the existing interior spaces towards the landscape and creates dynamic spatial and visual connections throughout the house. The south-facing gallery also plays a climatic role. Ventilated in the summer, it brings freshness, and is then heated by the sun in the winter.