The project incorporates the future inhabitants’ very specific requirements of a linear structural design. The same portico, repeated as a reflection, makes the design come full circle.
Two living units sliced through the middle with a conservatory, which makes the shared entrance. Private gardens are placed on the south side, the passageways and technical spaces on the north side.
The project had highly ambitious energy aims from the start, especially because of the use of very high quality materials, despite a limited budget. The architecture has brought together all the project data as well as streamlining the use of materials and the sequence of the spaces, following low-tech logic.
The volume is very compact, the structure is made of wood filled with unfired clay bricks, the walls are insulated on the outside with two layers of cork. Heating is provided by two masonry heaters (one per home), and there is a lagoon system in the garden for wastewater treatment. A covered conservatory breaks up the two units offering a generous shared space within the linear sequence of the building which runs from the railways at the west to the woods at the end of the plot at the east.
