Le Pré aux Pierres
Le Pré aux Pierres is the transformation, renovation and extension of 3 farm houses in les Yvelines near Paris into a new home and project space for a Contemporary Art collector, by architect David Apheceix and designer Vincent Le Bourdon. The estate made of meadows and forest is 25 hectares but the buildings were only facing a small central courtyard. Through a single gesture, the apposition of an orthogonal pattern onto the houses at an angle, the project aims at opening them towards the surrounding landscape and each other, through those new parallel lines. This pattern has the effect to carve volumes into the existing buildings, producing new façades, spaces and architectural elements. The existing vernacular materials, stone, oak wood and terra-cotta tiles, are stretched around those voids by the operation: beams transform into columns, roofs into walls, ceilings into partitions and the ground floor into first floor. This continuous beige concrete floor that spans between the houses is perforated following the same pattern outside, to entwine terraces and the edge of the forest, in a landscape project developed with Damien Roger. This architectural apparatus works as a tool for the owner to play with infinite dialogical agencies between artworks and a spectacular natural environnement.
