Moulin

[ 2019 ]

Project type Addition of a top floor to a house
Location Suresnes (92)
Client Private
Area Existing: 110m2, Elevation: 45m2 & 25m2
Timeline October 2019
Photographer Christophe Caudroy

A workers' house built in Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1934. The new owners, a family with two children, wanted to expand the home.

A first phase of work was carried out in 2012, raising the central volume and renovating the entire house. A second rooftop extension was completed in 2019 to elevate the volume facing the street.

The surrounding urban context features a highly fragmented architecture with little coherence. To soften the contrasting mix of materials and colors on the surrounding façades, the first extension was clad in white facing brick, and the rest of the façades were painted white to unify the project. The second extension was wrapped in white corrugated metal cladding.

The intended result is a façade composed of elements from different periods, showcasing a mix of materials, brick, stone, sheet metal, and plaster, all painted white to create a cohesive whole and integrate the house in a more contemporary way into its complex context.

A know-how serving the greatest number

The architect founded Cent 15 Architecture in 2011 and immediately embarked on his first major project: the renovation of the Trianon theater in Paris (18th arrondissement). While the architect uses his fresh perspective as an asset to sharpen his skills, Cent 15 Architecture has spent the following decade patiently exploring all types of projects in Paris, the suburbs, and provinces, mastering the constraints inherent to each building and finding relevant solutions, regardless of the context of the structures to be built or their budgets.

While Cent 15 Architecture is skilled at managing large teams in all languages of Babel, it intentionally avoids taking on too many projects, as its architecture draws strength from its pursuit of perfection, its almost obsessive desire for the delivered building to be the image of the future project and the future itself.

Cent 15 Architecture is concerned with sustainability in architecture, using organic, natural, and bio-based materials. This is evident in the Tekès restaurant project, which incorporates a 10 cm thick earth slab for the restaurant floor, an earth plaster on all the walls and ceiling, rammed earth for the reception desk and the bases of the counters and benches.

The agency also focuses on implementing the most natural climate principles within the home. The 9th Avenue project, for example, involves the construction of a wooden-frame house with straw insulation, an interior earth plaster (partly sourced from the land itself), and heating generated by biomass (wood from trees felled on the property).

In rehabilitation projects, the goal is to retain as much of the existing structure as possible, reusing what is useful on-site and thus avoiding the implementation of excessive new elements. One of the agency's principles is the repurposing of certain materials (often inexpensive). The Opéra project, for example, utilizes aluminum film insulation for the façades of "call boxes," while the Papier Tigre project uses recycled corrugated fiberboard sheets as the formwork for the air conditioning motor. Each material has its own nobility, depending on how it is applied and presented.

The agency's approach is ultimately to bring architectural issues back to their core functions, with the perfectly mastered function creating the original aesthetics of a project that is always unique.