Designing a house today is no longer simply about responding to a brief or achieving high energy performance. Above all, it is about finding a way of inhabiting a place.
Set on a long, narrow and densely wooded site in the Oise region of northern France, the house is organised around the qualities of its landscape. Its composition into three slightly offset volumes opens each living space towards the surrounding trees, multiplies orientations and extends views across the site.
The living spaces stretch from east to west while benefiting from southern light throughout the day. Each volume accommodates a distinct part of family life. Their relative autonomy creates a clear hierarchy of uses without separating them, allowing each space to establish its own relationship with the landscape.
The same attention to place is reflected in the choice of materials. Timber and earth define both the character and the atmosphere of the house. Straw, although invisible once construction is complete, plays a fundamental role in the thermal performance of the building envelope. Together, these materials create an architecture whose qualities are as much sensory as they are constructive.
From the earliest design stages, the project was developed in close collaboration with the clients and the building performance engineer, with a shared ambition: allowing the architecture itself to provide comfort before relying on technical systems. Orientation, cross ventilation, solar protection, a highly insulated envelope and the thermal inertia of earth finishes made it possible to design a house without air conditioning or mechanical heat recovery ventilation, while maintaining excellent comfort throughout both summer and winter.
Building the house required the removal of part of the existing woodland. Rather than treating this timber as waste, it was retained and now fuels the house's biomass boiler, while new trees are gradually being replanted across the site. Rainwater is collected to irrigate the garden and supply the sanitary facilities.
House in Oise does not seek to present an environmental manifesto. Instead, it explores a balanced relationship between place, materials and everyday life. It is an architecture in which light, climate and materiality quietly shape the experience of inhabiting the house.
Project Details
Materiality
- Reinforced concrete basement and foundations
- Prefabricated timber cassette structure
- Straw bale insulation
- Vertical timber rainscreen cladding
- Interior clay plaster finishes
- Cast polished concrete floors (ground floor) and timber flooring (upper floor)
- Triple-glazed Bildau & Bussmann windows
Environmental Strategy
- Bioclimatic design
- Natural cross ventilation
- Underfloor heating powered by a biomass log boiler
- Rainwater harvesting for WC flushing and garden irrigation
Comfort
- No air conditioning
- No mechanical heat recovery ventilation
- Very low heating demand
