Winter garden house
The Winter Garden House project in Saint-Ouen begins with a paradox: how can a home be extended while preserving as much permeable ground as possible? How can it adjoin the neighbouring buildings without preventing light from passing through?
Within a dense urban fabric where every square metre could be built upon, the intervention consists of removing hard surfaces from half of the plot and constructing a large transparent envelope to extend the living space.
The Greenhouse House works with what is already there: the suburban backdrop, the irregular party-wall outlines, the neighbouring volumes and the walls that surround it. From the street, it reveals the void, the structure and the depth of the plot. Moving towards its centre, the space gains depth around a built core. The area that is actually heated and enclosed is reduced to a minimal dwelling, suspended above the ground.
In contrast to a solid, opaque and protective house, the Greenhouse House is conceived as a lightweight, transparent structure, hollowed out from within.
Rather than enclosing a fixed programme, it defines a void and makes an open-ended, available volume habitable — a space crossed by light that extends the garden into the interior.
Neither inside nor outside. This intermediate condition forms the basis of the project. The Greenhouse House is conceived as an adaptable space that can be extended, partially insulated, planted or modified. It embraces incompleteness as a quality and leaves open the possibility for uses to evolve with the seasons or with changes in family life.
