| Mud Houses |
(Isle d’Abeau, France) |
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The client intended to restore a forgotten material and construction technique, puddled clay, through the instigation of this project set in the “earth village” of the Isle of Abeau.
The particularities of this material - resistance to compressive forces only, zero resistance to surface water, shuttered material realisable in spring and summer months only - were constraints that closely defined the project.
The houses, grouped two by two, form massif blocks of earth, isolated from the ground by a concrete plinth. Each block consists of three levels, set below the protective envelope of an over-sailing glass roof, the shelter of a colonnade along the street, the thickness of a terrace overlooking the garden.
Natural extensions to the house, these “seasonal” spaces become inhabitable when the climatic conditions are favourable; the concept exploits the notion of the Russian doll. The green house roof structure superimposes the mud blocks as a form of protection, just as it enables solar energy to be collected through photosensitive panels. In the summer a thermostat controls a simple system of ventilators.
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