Text details provided by architects. Located in the jungle with a few steps from the ocean, in Lit-at-Mix (Lands, France), the Maud Cobet has recently completed a new project for a private customer on a 1,510 square meter plot. Designed as an expansion of an early project completed in 2018, it embraces a developed approach to the 178 square meter (SDP) house (130 square meters in 2018, additional 48 square meters in 2024).
A house in trees? After six years of its first intuition, Maud Cobate refines the concept of a house in harmony with his environment. Volumes, construction methods, materials, and all interact with the current landscape, create a consistent dress where contemporary architecture is originally mixed with natural surroundings. The H-shaped layout is pronounced by a raw concrete ladder, which leads to a panoramic roof with a sea view. From the beginning in 2018, Maud Cobate’s approach was to integrate the house in its environment, use local resources and embrace the existing character of the site.
Built on concrete stilts, the house is elevated above the ground, aligning with the verticality of cedar trees, introducing an unexpected contrast within the uniformity of the forest. Wearing fake, dark brown saturated Lands Sea pine, echoes the texture of the bark of the tree, strengthens this continuity. Off-site prefibrication-Timber-frame walls and wooden fiber insulation, including a local carpenter, were carried out by a local carpentry, which can be assembled both the house and its expansion with a disturbance of the minimum site. By preserving the natural ground, the under-house location is available for storage or shared summer comfort, further nest is made obsessively under the second volume by a lap pool. There are adjustable wooden lovors in green roofs and zinaries that filter sunlight when providing privacy.
A developed housing – now includes two interacted sections, the house is designed keeping in mind the future expansion – possibly adding a third or fourth module, strengthens the concept of a house made of interlinking spaces. The West Volume has a living room, kitchen, garage and two bedrooms, with a south-facing roof, shaded by an expanded roof overhang. The small volume is dedicated to the master suite, which features a bedroom, dressing room, office and bathroom, which opens on a west side with breathtaking scenes of the forest.
These two autonomous “cabins” are connected through a shelter route. Inside, the composition of the rooms, orientation and size are produced by uses and scenes, the ambinys are made from the outside natural environment: green, dark green, ocean blue, bark brown … These colors expand in the central courtyard, where the game between the interior and the external elements is centered by the wooden cladding – a unique atmosphere in every room. And throughout the house, the odor of the ocean in the air.
