Maison L1
Name : Maison L1
City : JUZET-DE-LUCHON (31)
Program : Detached house
Conception date : 2011
Delivery date : 2014
Net Floor Area : 140 m²
Budget including taxes / Ratio living area by m² : 2140€/m²
Architect : Prax Architectes
Contact details : 11 rue Louis Payrau, 31800 Saint-Gaudens, France
Email address : contact@praxarchitectes.com
The approach of the project was to reinterpret the vernacular archetype of the Pyrenean barn by transposing it in a contemporary architecture, in order to build this dwelling project.
The openings of the project are made such that they protect it from the dominant North and West bad weather, and open onto South and East with the means of frames and terraces, in a way to enjoy the view on the bottom of the valley.
This house is targeted at a couple with children. The entry stands North, from the courtyard made by the built structure and the car-shelter. The entry area is separated from the living room by stairs, which thus define a more intimate space.
This place is now hosting a piano and has become a small musical lounge which enjoys the peaceful and never-ending northern light.
The stairs mark a threshold and merge into a servant line mainly composed of storage areas. This line separates the living rooms from the more specific and technical spaces. Thus, in the northern area stand wet and storage rooms. The family rooms in the South area, kitchen, living room, home office, bedrooms, are therefore freed from these purely functional elements.
To make this contrast stand out, the whole height beneath the ceiling is opened on the living room. This emptiness rules all the rooms in the house, especially thanks to the high walkway whose underside indicates a threshold.
The dividing walls and the lining on the inside walls are treated with the same plywood spruce. The whole of the storages and furniture, likewise the office, the kitchen, the bathroom furniture and the cupboards, were all made-to-measure and in this same wood, which gives a unity and coherence to the global dwelling. The undersides of the horizontal ceilings are treated in wood boards, which gives roughness to these areas and thus contrasts with the large smooth spruce boards.
The wood-burner is the main heating system of the house, and the living room organises itself around it. Its different positions (open, rotating…) gives it a most user-friendly role. It is associated with a wall lined up with stone, in order to add inertia to the house.
The structure of the house is composed of wooden frame and skeleton, in a way to allow a structural prefabrication of the project, to reduce its costs, and to have better finishing work service.
On the other hand, the constructive expression of the project recalls the themes of the barn with a stone foundation, a small height of the living floor thanks to the principle of "rafter-truss" framework. The paradox is therefore created between an external morphology which joins the architectural landscape of the valley, and the open insides, proper to a more contemporary design.
