Entre rue et jardin
Quebec City, Canada
The owners aspire to live in a large open space but are also attracted to hidden corners and spaces. This duality inspires the configuration and the organization of the project. They dream of a loft but the shape of the site, its dimensions and the layout of the existing building do not allow the development of such a space. At the heart of the new volume, a generously glazed vertical core organizes the living rooms of the house in the longitudinal axis: the living room and the kitchen on the ground floor; a music studio, a dance studio and a small library on the first floor. In the transverse axis, the visual and physical links between the street and the garden, two highly contrasting environments, is observed at the core.
With A. Vallières
Photography by F. Michaud
The house, located on a thin strip of land, is spread over three long and narrow levels. It is conceived as an "interval" architecture, emerging in the urban fabric. The porous volume threads its way between the street and the former "void" of the plot. The inside of the house is enriched by the complexity of the site.
On the ground-floor, the garden induces an expansion of the interior spaces by playing the role of an exterior room. With the seasons change, it defines the atmosphere of the living room and the kitchen.
The pattern of holes in the fence, generated by a computer program, introduces a progressive variety in the arrangement, density and dimensions of the perforations. To preserve the privacy of the house, there are fewer openings on the ground floor.
