Single family home
rue Professor Villemin – Bordeaux
Client: private
Gross floor area: 82 m2
Cost: €100 000 tax incl.
Completed: February 2008

The site is flat, rectangular, measuring 200m2 and is situated in an area on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Bacalan. The houses in the street are row houses with a little space in the front and a garden behind.

We turned the house the other way around, still setback from the street but now perpendicular to it. This rectangular house with a habitable floor area of 82m2 measures 13m long by 7m deep by 3m tall. By turning and planting the house down the length of the site, it benefits from a new south facing orientation onto which open up the 2 main rooms from a space free on 3 sides and with direct access to the garden from the street. The living space occupies two thirds of the volume, the rest being occupied by a bedroom and a small office separated by the bathroom.

The house is extended by a terrace running the length of one long façade and doubles the surface area when it is nice weather. A trellis shelters one from the sun and allows one to fix, tend or let grow plants from the shadecloth. The envelope of the house is of metallic material consisting of 4 gantrys, a double skin cladding system and the waterproofing on top of corrugated metal sheeting. The facades are of black narrow profiled corrugated metal sheeting, the joinery again in black aluminium with the trellis made from rough steel.
It could almost resemble one of several little warehouses or hangars scattered between the houses of the 1950’s in the area or a container from the marine base close by. The joinery, the reflection of the wide dark glazed surfaces, the brilliance of the metal cladding and the trellis confer nevertheless a discreet sophistication, which indicates a more domestic role.