Archi pas chère : Bâtiments modestes réinventés
In the current climate – shaped by recession, affected by rising fossil fuel prices and bound up with the imperatives of sustainable development – investing in and reinventing existing buildings, however modest, is a worthwhile alternative to building new. Modest buildings? Simple structures, with no particular architectural ambition, built using the common practices of their day, basic in structure and familiar in appearance. A garden shed, a hut, a small garage, a worker's cottage, a cowshed, a warehouse, a storeroom, a hangar, two barns, a joinery workshop, a 1960s detached house, a vineyard hut... The projects presented make up a sufficiently mixed collection to reveal the considerable potential of buildings regarded as "undistinguished", an almost inexhaustible pool of opportunities for living.
The book's introduction sets out the various reasons for making the case for the conversion and refurbishment of modest buildings.
First of all, they have the merit of already existing: they are already there, embedded in a rural or urban fabric, close to shops and public transport, in village or town centres. A new house, by contrast, barring exceptions (and substantial means), is obliged to go on whatever land is available, that is, mainly on the outskirts of towns and cities, in the first, second or even third ring…
These buildings, which enjoy a valuable location, can also offer a real opportunity in terms of floor area and volume. When they were built for a use other than housing, they often define spaces on a scale quite out of proportion with what a new detached house could have offered – because of cost, of course, but also from a regulatory standpoint. The planning documents currently in force would not permit their construction.
From an architectural point of view, the constraint of the existing building is not a handicap that would make it a kind of second best compared with new construction. On the contrary, it provides an opportunity to question standard models of living, which is valuable because it engages architects and their clients in a process of exploration rather than reproduction.
Far from stifling inventiveness, converting and refurbishing these everyday buildings does indeed produce new solutions, as the features of the projects gathered here show: a double-height kitchen crossed by a walkway serving part of the upper level (Underground rural), a plan with no circulation space connected to a winter garden as large as the heated floor area (Loft des champs), most of the functions of the home grouped within a cube (De la mise en boîte), spaces that fold and stretch between 1.20 m and 4.50 m in height (Le toit habité), a shower cubicle suspended in the stairwell (Le pavillon où rien ne se perd et tout se transforme), and so on.
On another level, reusing existing buildings rather than building new also helps to limit urban sprawl and its effects: the loss of farmland, the decline of biodiversity and the alteration of rural landscapes. It is worth recalling that, according to the statistics, the construction of detached houses accounts for most of the 70,000 ha of land artificialised each year in France, which every ten years amounts to the area of a département such as the Vendée or the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. A scattering of development across the countryside that is hard to reverse.
Information:
- Author: Olivier Darmon
- Publisher: Ouest France
- ISBN: 978-2-7373-5238-6
- Format: 19x19 cm
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