La maison derrière le mur
"The house behind the wall" is a family house near Nantes (France). Thanks to a timber structure, we built the house along an existing stone wall for bioclimatic and aesthetic purpose.
Maintening the site’s identity was the start of our project : stone fences, an old barn, a brick garden shed and an abandoned wash house are typical of small lands in local center villages. We choose to put the new house on the same location as the former barn to take advantage of the stone wall’s thermal inertia and to optimize resources and costs.
The new construction is built along the existing wall with a rational timber structure made of five identical frames. The living spaces are defined by the supporting structure : on the first floor, an open space looks out over the garden thanks to a full-height glass facade ; on the second floor, the bedrooms face the street.
Service spaces (cellar, kitchen, toilet, entrace) are placed on the first floor, in a compact zone along the street, creating a thermical protection for living spaces. On the second floor, a long walk-in wardrobe forms a corridor to optimize bedroom’s use.
The owners wanted as much space as possible for a low budget. We optimized costs by simplifying the construction process : traditional wooden frame, bioclimatic design (reuse of wall’s thermical inertia, big windows in the south), compact volume (identical floors, wardrobe with limited height), raw materials (raw timber for built-in furniture, low-cost «rural» cladding, painted screed)
