Tour an Architect’s Lush House in Provincial France, Built In a Former Quarry

On this cave-like residence, furnishings and artworks exist in an intimate relationship with the panorama, erasing the boundaries between inside and out of doors. “For me, the actual border is greater than the home windows: it’s the curtains that sway within the wind,” Levy says. This hints on the poetry of this up to date home, the place the constructing and its vegetation kind an entire, making a rigidity between a refined, radically geometric expression and the exuberance of nature. It’s an summary interpretation of vernacular structure: The retaining partitions are fabricated from concrete clad in stone, devoted to the structure of the Gard area in that they’re linked to the terrain, making the villa a definite object, rigorously inserted into its setting.

Inside, the identical brushed Hainaut blue stone is used for the flooring, whereas the aqueous inexperienced partitions and white ceilings are paired with arches in polished black Corian. These arches open onto the lounge and its barely rounded wall, which Levy imagines as extending an invite to stroll alongside it and to the touch it. The arches additionally open up vistas as one strolls the property, like vaulted passages. “Corian marks transitions and circulation. While you go from one view of the backyard to the following, from one space of sunshine to a different, you go by means of these darkish vaults. These are areas that exist between two completely different universes, like interludes. They’re additionally a manner of exhibiting that we’re crossing by means of these volumes, as a result of the construction of this mission is made up of pierced plenty and huge voids.” Corian is an uncommon materials with its irregularities which can be the results of the thermoforming course of. It’s shiny and polished however, in contrast to lacquer, it retains imperfections that give its floor an virtually aquatic really feel. “Holding the Corian handrail to climb into the rooms is a sensory expertise,” Levy says.