Les Maisons Temple

The primary objective of this study was to design a free-standing three-bedroom house, using a well-tested industrialized building system. The secondary objective was to develop a generic typology with different program capacity, on one or two floors, to study the relationship among grouped houses and to solve the parking problem. The design of this house was to be radically different from the norm and clearly classical in concept.

The plan had to be completely novel, comfortable and classic, and it was Palladio’s architecture that served as the point of departure. The square, or nearly square plan, holds the advantage of lighting a three-bedroom house on the two major façades, leaving the laterals blind. This plan is also capable of responding to different orientations, with complete flexibility in the positioning of the entry and living room.

The general plan of the house is designed on a geometric frame, relating all parts in terms of the modular discipline of the construction system. The visual axis connecting sequences of rooms, so important to a generous sense of space in a small house, is related to the geometric pattern and distribution scheme, in such way as to be adapted to the requirements of modern living, clearly hierarchizing day and night zones through a central hall distributor which connects the two lateral wings.

The change of scale from Renaissance Classical proportions to the needs of a small modern house had implications not only in the surface area of the plan, but also in the hierarchy of space available, and the relationship between those spaces and their use. The geometry of a Palladian plan harmoniously relates the smallest room to the largest; in this case, the smallest rooms, the service areas and hall, had to be proportioned so as to fit both the modern requirements of utilities, the modular construction system and positioning of openings, and the overall harmonics, which introduced another factor to the already difficult study of the plan, the lowest common proportional functional denominator.

The proportional system used is a simplified and select adaptation of the fundamental classical rules, here using the square, square and a third, root of two, golden number and variants of a pentagon.

The culmination of the process was one object, one volume, one plan, which contained the essentials of all that was optimum in the design studies: the House. Above all, it is the volume which generates the image and it is the image which ensures the success or failure of the objectives.

The volume is composed of four elements: the column, the pilaster, the intercolumnia space, and the roof or pediment. It is the quintessence of a temple-house without being mimetic, an established, almost traditionally comfortable image. Nothing shocks, disturbs or is out of place. There is no simpler volume for a house, there is no simpler support system of roof, walls or openings, and the result is cultured, well mannered and elegant.