At the very beginnig there was a house. A big house and two garages facing the street, a garden and two sheds in the backyard. Then there were two apartments. A two room one at the ground floor and a duplex at the upper floors, both sharing garages and garden. So when the LD family had the opportunity to purchase the flat at the ground floor, came the idea to create the former family house again.
For the parents and their three girls, VOUS designed a wide living space gathering living room, kitchen, laundry, bathroom at the ground floor, now completly transformed. The double orientation is permitted by opening the central stone wall. The living room is wide open on the garden thank's to a 3x3m bay window protected from the sun by a slidding expanded metal shutter conceived and built by ourselves. Here the wood on the floor and the furniture, the stone on the walls and the rough metal of the beams over the openings are getting close up togheter. At the second floor, the formers living room and kitchen of the duplex becomes girl's kingdom. A large and luminous landing full of games distributes the three rooms. Finally, at the third floor, the wide parent's room and a last one for visiting friends and family.
Added to this space tranformation we decided to improve house's thermal performances to the BBC renovation label level. Wood fiber Themal Exterior Insulation and other technical works allowed the family to reduce their energy consumption and improve house's summer comfort. TEI means new envelope and a grey douglas wood vertical clading was choosen to fit with neigbouhood's houses colors. The galvanised steel gutters and the rolling shutter casings fit into the thickness of the clading. Former white windows were maintained at the uper floors so we imaginated white laquered aluminium window frames, colored as every house's metal part conceived and built by ourthelves, from the garage's facade to the railings along the street.
