JULIE SHURTZ MUYLDERMANS
HORT CLOUD VILLA
FOR CHÂTEAU LA COSTE
250 m2 villa on the domaine of CHÂTEAU LA COSTE HORT = Lily of the Valley in Gaelic Irish HORT CLOUD = Play on words with Oort Cloud
Title for Mr. McKillen's villa from a beautiful memory I have of a field of these flowers covering a forest floor in Finland infusing the air with an incredible perfume. The villa is a parametric flower treehouse with a cascade to a pool.
The client requested a wood house with 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, living room, kitchen and outside terraces for breakfast. It is planned that a 17m long pontoon will bring the guests to the house from the vineyard facing the plot. A cascade of water at the façade will fall onto the natural pool below, accessed by the spiraling stair arriving at a point just above the gr
The architectural idea stemmed from my interest in using algorithms and new technologies for creating habitats on Mars. Here is took two petals and two loci and set the parameters for a sweep which yielded this form. The challenge was to transform it into a viable house.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
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First site sketches on new plot
The exquisite wood structure was engineered by Frederic Domeny, of Charpentiers des Alpes et Provence. The columns at the base are basically hidden in the sides of the hill so that the house appears to hover above the site with the second floor amongst the trees; essentially a treehouse. They connect to micro-piles so as to have a minimum foundation impacting this verdant site and allowing the maximum number of trees to remain.
The central stair is enclosure is generated from a slenderized version of the original parametric sweep and then infused by Paul Bourke himself with his wondrous "diffusion limited aggregation!"
Next we worked with the talented team of Mamou-Mani to bring the work to fabrication with these lustrous models 3D printed in the bio-material of fermented sugarcane (and imbued with their special bio-fire retardant from Bath, England). Can you live without it?
