House in the vineyards in Vouvry
As part of a wine-growing context, the new building reinterprets the attributes of the gatehouses – small utilitarian winegrower's construction – and the retaining walls that structure the landscape. The successive plinths, fashioned from old planks of raw wood, are anchored in the slope and create landings that mark out the path. On this mineral pedestal stands a light wooden volume, with an aluminum sheet roof protecting the whole of an aerial cap. In addition to the use of raw materials the whole composition links the building to the terroir and its particular work in the vineyard. Herringbone shutters – a bourgeois motif borrowed from the cures – compose variations of facades according to needs. A pergola and railing cling along the base like a vine trellis. Under the generous height of a thin beam ceiling, the living space revolves around a central piece of furniture comprising the various services. The slender proportion of the large French windows enhances the generous atmosphere of the ground floor like a piano nobile. A small cavern, dug into the mass of a wall of vines, is housed in an introverted way within the site.
