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2021 GFD 🏆 Awards

Winner | Villa Varoise | NADAAA

For centuries, the enclosed courtyard has been overlaid on various geographic settings—each time transformed according to the climate, rituals, and construction practices of the place.   A vehicle to capture the outdoors within the building, the courtyard is defined by its interiority. The slipped court of this project provides simultaneous interiority and exteriority—protected and private as well as extroverted and engaged.  The house respects strict zoning guidelines, while merging with the landscape, extending natural flora over the roof. Sited within an olive tree grove, Pinus Pinea, and a vineyard, it seeks to leverage the sloping terrain, producing sustainable systems for amplification and cultivation.

Global Future Design Awards 2022: Discounted Entries Open Now! Save $50
Super Early Discount – 20th October 2021 to 30th December 2021 – $199 = $149

🏆 Winner
Global Future Design Awards 2021

Villa Varoise
Residential Architecture Built 

Firm
NADAAA

Architect/Designer
NADAAA

Design Team
NADAAA with BIDARD & RAISSI

Location
France

Country
United States

Photographer/Copyright
©John Horner

The most significant result of this integration of landscape and house is the production of a monumental vaulted threshold to a central courtyard. The vault is a ruled surface that mediates between the geometry of the supporting stair at the northeast corner, the pool, and living areas above. The main armature of the house appears as a single concrete monolith around two perpendicular beams; the first, the wall between the pool and the lower east wing, and the second, the cantilevered wall on the north edge of the house. Embedded within the spatial organizational logic of the house, these beams are encrypted within the “experience” of the house: windows into the pool, doorways from living areas to bedrooms, and views to the exterior, using the economies of opening to assure structural continuity.

Structurally, the roof is a series of surface-active vaults that produce strong lateral stability. The slope of the vault maximizes the zoning envelope in order to bring in southern light.  Beneath the roof are the primary living, eating, and sleeping spaces. The lower wing is conceived as a street-corridor, activated by a reading room and bedrooms that open directly onto the landscape. Many of the living spaces of this house are outdoors, taking advantage of varying views, times of the day and public vs. private moments. For this reason the architecture of the house extends into the landscape, retains it, and frames spaces in between.

The site offers the possibility of leveraging the terrain to produce sustainable systems for amplification and cultivation. Roof drainage and site hydrology are tied together to provide a water and irrigation system for the landscape.


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