Located in Brittany, France, between a river bank and the woods, this house is blending perfectly with its immediate surroundings. When designing it, Paris based studio Lode Architecture have played with dualities: exposed against hidden, open against closed, transparent against opaque. The house is built into the slope of the site, so that seen from the back only the top floor is visible. And maybe visible is an overstatement, as the vertical raw wood cladding practically makes it look like a bunch of logs. The two floors are treated differently from many points of view. The first and most obvious one is the facade treatment. While the top floor is camouflaged by the wooden structure, the ground floor is made of glass on thin metal frames on three sides. When all the sliding glass doors are closed, the surfaces reflect the trees in such a way that the house becomes even more difficult to spot in the woods. These sliding doors open on large surfaces when the weather is mild, so one can get the feeling of living rather in the woods than in a house. The other difference is the fact that the ground floor is completely open, without any partitions, while the top floor is separated into bedrooms.
The open-plan ground floor is organized around two central elements: the suspended open fireplace and the staircase.
The staircase creates a very artistic installation made of layers of wood supported by vertical metal sheet partitions.
The kitchen and dining table are actually combined into one big wooden island. An interesting web of pendant lights with exposed intertwining cords covers the wooden ceiling.
Two overhead openings into the ceiling, one above the living area and one above the kitchen, bring the sky into the living room.
The top floor is dedicated to the night area, and the walls of the bedrooms are painted anthracite. The bedrooms have access to a terrace that is protected by a vertical wooden structure that filters the light.
