Modern Holiday Home | Cabane au Cap Ferret | France | Atelier Du Pont

This project was designed to limits its own impact on the existing green space. Similarly, to the peninsula of Cap Ferret, the terrain that slopes gently down towards the sea is covered with a small pine grove of strawberry trees, yuccas, and pine trees typical of the region. The house was designed to exist in harmony with the landscape. It is invisible from the road because of the vegetal screen. In recalling a wood cabin, it emphasizes the visual openings that further heighten this sense of the surrounding natural environment.
The house’s location limits its impact on the site and preserves the highest number of trees possible. It uses the natural slope of the ground so that each floor can directly access the outdoor spaces.
The slanted roofs lighten the building’s silhouette and limit its impact; without gutters, the pine needles and falling leaves are free to slide down the surface of the roof. The facade uses mostly wood to mimic the pine grove that shelters it while also maintaining glass openings onto the natural environment to generate reflections and a sense of porousness......more

Modern French House | House L | Yvelines | France | christian pottgiesser architecturespossibles

Less than half an hour's drive west from Paris city center, designed as an extension of a private residence to an 18th-century structure, sought to provide every family member with a private realm. The roughly 5000 m2 plot of old trees called for a project that would leave the spacious ground predominantly untouched.

The design foresaw an amorphous plinth storey with curved stone walls heaped up with earth and used as a general living area. It emerges a completely “superfluous” space without any specific functional qualities. As if a toothpaste tube-like device could absorb all programmatic, psychological and urban design requirements. Here, most various and adoptable uses become imaginable and consequently possible - a superfluousness revealing necessary........more

Modern French House Design | Villa S | Corenc | France | Hérault Arnod Architectes

The house stretches along the contour in three successive layers that open like a fan to the landscape and the view of Grenoble in the southwest, creating a new topography intended to make the land habitable, very steep. Each level has its own logic in terms of its content, its position relative to the trees and the view: the non-overlapping stages can generate large terraces and is at odds to win the livability comfort. The set has something spectacular, it's a place in everyday life but also to receive......more

Modern Small House Design | House 51| Bordeaux | France | Fabre de Marien

This house is situated in a central area of Bordeaux and occupies the maximum surface area possible imposed by the building regulations. It is an extruded box measuring 8m in length by 13m deep and 6.5m tall.
The main central part of this volume is removed, cut out and is connected to the street by means of a porch/threshold space sheltering the parking places with the new house being more compact. This void allows natural lighting and ventilation into all the rooms despite the compactness of the house. The connecting views between the rooms and circulation spaces throughout both levels produces a sensation of complexity and the void equally becomes an additional external space during nice weather.
The facades are pierced by windows and openings; each one different, characterized by its placement. Glazed doors open internally revealing metal balconies, used on the street edge, relieved sliding glazed windows are used upstairs with views to the patio and the garden, windows used in the smaller rooms and large glazed sliding doors open up the ground floor onto the patio and garden. The house is built entirely in rendered masonry; the joinery used is lacquered aluminium and the floors in resin.......more

Loft XX Paris 20 | France | LAN

Located in Paris, the project occupies the attic floor of a XIX century building. It is a tall space (5 meters at the ridgeline) under a high-pitched roof held up by two large wood trusses, and well lit with windows on both the front and back walls. In order to satisfy the client's desire to keep the exceptional volume of the space open, the architects placed all of the service functions, such as the kitchen, dressing room, closets, and bathroom, into one compact, almost free-floating, container. The "roof" of this container becomes the sleeping loft. Importantly, the container stays clear of the front and rear walls and the ceiling, just missing the bottom chord of one of the trusses.....more

A House In Yvelines, France | Christian Pottgiesser

The history of this house looks like a long ripening, those that give the wines. In 2004, projecting to grow its owners decide to appeal to Christian Pottgiesser found in a publication.
Like many corporate sponsors, they have specific ideas in mind.
For their four children, they want to add to the home they already live - probably the old orangery of the castle eighteenth century - a high extension and a single block, savvy western boundary of parcel close views of the adjoining property on their garden.
Six years later and a dozen projects proposed, studied, modified the house was completed this summer and the garden is under development.
Result of a patient maieutics, the program took shape through an iterative process of extensive discussions between client and architect required in addition to respect for local constraints: three perimeters of Historic Monuments, the obligation of a gabled roof, conservation of a network of sewage lift bisecting the garden.
Groping in wavering, drawing in new desires, the desire to benefit from common areas for the whole family and private apartments for each of its members was eventually imposed. Hence the final proposal both clear and surprising: a powerful base from which emerge all five small towers erected a totem, one for everyone, including parents and children or to go into details: a ground- floor connected to the small west side of the old building developed in the form of amoeba, the architect recalls with a smile "a soft form>> on about 47 m long and roughly 15 m deep - which envelope the image of a river of rocks, about 8 m high base of three towers, and serves two others just in outlying suburbs.....more

Private House In Charbonnières-les-Bains | France | KORTEKNIE STUHLMACHER ARCHITECTEN

Site:Charbonnières-les-Bains (F)
Client:private
Structural engineer:Pieters Bouwtechniek, Utrecht, Jaap Dijks
Contractor:Christian Dörschug, Aichach (D)
Design:2004/2005
Realisation:2006/2007

In the hilly garden behind their tiny temporary chalet a French family with young children wished to build a more durable home. Inspired by a publication of our project house No19 in a French magazine, they commissioned us to design an all-timber house around a small pine tree (‘the bonsai’); a permanent, sturdy and unconventional house for themselves, their many books and their collection of art and design.
Starting-point of the design was the simple volume of house No19 but modified according to the topography of the site, the intended use and the existing trees.
Its sculptural section creates different spaces within the long space that all have their own character and proportions: a wide living room with a high ceiling, windows to all different sides, a large roof-light and folding windows that can be opened completely to the garden; a small and narrow library-space with direct views to the 'bonsai-tree' and a generous, functional kitchen and dining room.
The cantilevering upper floor, another long and narrow volume, is placed cross-wise on top of the lower volume and creates on either side of the ground floor covered outdoor spaces.
The children's rooms are small and simple and share a wide corridor to play; the bathroom has direct access to a roof-terrace and the master bedroom offers at the same time privacy and spectacular views to the surroundings.
The choice of materials is completely sustainable. The construction consists of prefabricated elements of solid timber and was assembled on site within a few days.
For the outer skin imported European larch-wood was chosen, treated with natural stain.
The sliding and folding shutters are integrated in the thickness of the timber cladding, just the 'parking spaces' for the shutters provide for subtle accents of colour in the monochrome façade.....more

Glass House | Rhone, France | Barres Coquet

More pictures of the house here

It is a house of glass or transparent house. Completely surrounded by vegetation, the contact with nature is permanent. The house plays the real role of "wall" of the living space more than the physical wall (glass facade). The house is built a flooded ground,therefore this metal-frame house is off the ground by stilts, standing there, between the poplars and the pond, without "disturbing". The wide roof overhangs draw a horizontal plate "immaterial" the sun and protect the living space of the house.

House data:
Architect: Barres Coquet
Material: Steel and glass
Surface :200 m2
Draft Year: 2001
Location: Rhone,France
Photographer: © Erick Saillet

More house design at Barres Coquet

Guest House | Cévennes,South-Central France | Verne

This luxury guesthouse is located at the foot of the Cévennes. It has three rooms and three suites and an astonishing swimming pool and garden where you can sit down and dream away.
Source:OWI

Home Conversion | a Home In France | South West France | Kate Hume Design

Set in the rolling hills of South West France, the interior of this 17th Century manor house has been completely re-designed to maximize space and light.
Contemporary furniture from Birdman, mixed with vintage finds and classic upholstery combine to create a relaxed holiday atmosphere and an inspiring environment.
A large kitchen and living space with an open hearth is a charming and practical setting for year-round entertaining.
Text and images from Kate Hume Design