How can we rethink popular urban heritage? How can we adapt a space unsuited to contemporary life? A 1930s “old lady” takes her spring break in Bordeaux.

Originally a small stone house built in 1930 in Bordeaux. Modest in its proportions and lacking decorative features on the façade, its position which slightly set back from the neighboring houses allows it to reveal its compact dimensions at 32 Rue de Rivière. The project had to integrate within the small house of elua®’s architecture and design studio, a living space, and a vegetated outdoor area.

Designing Mademoiselle meant imagining a powerful breath of air within the existing structure—a dilation that opens the space, removes partitions, and multiplies levels. Conceived like a stage set, Mademoiselle is a breath of life within this small stone house. The façade and roof remain unchanged, but inside, the space is colored, expanded, illuminated, and reorganized to define a functional yet whimsical, contemporary, and free composition, open to the outside and as gentle as a cocoon.

Emblematic of elua® studio, a functional and inspiring showcase.