Villa Jalle

PROVENCE / Faced with a request for the exceptional, and considerable design requirements, this renovation creates a vibrant gesture that plays on vernacular architecture codes.

A mediocre and degraded building, with owners who were aesthetic and demanding both in functional as well as architectural terms, and a desire for contemporary design within the heart of traditional Provencal architecture… Taking up these challenges with relish, the scheme spiced up vernacular codes by playing with volume (vast vs. intimate), materials (lime / wood), and optical illusions.

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A house of possibilities. How, from a half-buried farmhouse and its barn in ruins, to make a home flooded with light, both spacious and intimate, that two people can live in as comfortably as fifteen? And how, from under a weighty yoke of regulations (earthquake standards, vernacular codes), to create a liberating space?

Movement. The response focused on creating two spaces joined together by the materials and the movement of the lines: on one side, a vast living space opening onto the countryside through a double glass façade, facing southwest; on the other side, an ensemble on three restored levels housing the bedrooms, bathrooms, a play room and a library. Accommodated in the original space, the ensemble preserves the traditional volumes of a large Provencal country house.

Tectonic. With glass on two walls up to the full height under the roof (from 3 to 7 m), the living room comes alive under a contrasting movement of inside/outside and floor/ceiling. Outside, the wooden louvers seem to move forward and backward, streaking the walls with the movement of the sun and creating a play on empty and full spaces. Inside, the oak parquet floor rises up to shape the furniture, the fireplace, and up the stairs, creating an aerial origami.

Construction work began after the validation of detailed studies. In addition to considerable demolition, the foundation needed to be completely re-poured.
The renovation required combining high-performance systems and sustainable materials in terms of weight, seismic resistance, and thermal inertia (honeycomb bricks, geothermal energy, passive cooling, etc.) in a region with extreme temperatures in summer and in winter.