In a building constructed in the 1970s, Studio Jean Verville architectes has renovated one of the dwellings to create the architect's own creative laboratory. The building is located in the Canadian city of Quebec, in a setting surrounded by the impressive Laurentian Mountains, the cityscape and the St. Lawrence River.

The renovation is an architectural experiment in which light and the body-to-body relationship between transparency and reflection transform the real space through distancing and multiplication. The house eliminates obsolete construction systems and equipment, but takes advantage of the thermal inertia of the concrete envelope, which absorbs both the heat of the winter solar radiation and the coolness of the summer night, and then gently redistributes it.
The project developed by Studio Jean Verville architectes proposes a flexible system of modular spatial organisation that divides the volume into 6 distribution alternatives with indeterminate functions. In order to neutralise the compactness of the unit, the housing equipment is strategically placed to allow constant physical and visual permeability in the house.

The project makes reasonable use of materials and components with the aim of limiting resources, types of intervention and costs. The volume is divided by a serial composition of glazed sliding walls, allowing fluid reconfigurations while diluting perceptions of size.


BRUJ «cabinet de curiosités» by Studio Jean Verville architectes. Photograph by Maxime Brouillet.
 

Project description by Studio Jean Verville architectes

Now dividing his time between practice and teaching at the School of Architecture of Laval University in Quebec City, architect Jean Verville, appealed by the brutalist architecture punctuating the national capital with significant buildings, established his creative laboratory in a residential tower, designed in the 1970's by architect Marcel Bilodeau, and standing out as a monumental sculpture facing the Plains of Abraham Park.

The renovation of a compact 79 sqm unit is deployed in an architectural experiment orchestrating a space with a graphic dimension. Like an observation post offering breathtaking views of the Laurentian Mountains, the urban landscape, and the St Lawrence River, the interior comes alive with an immutable body-to-body relationship between transparency and reflection, while transforming realities through distancing and multiplication.

First, a complete curettage prescribed by a necessary upgrading. Thus, freed from all construction systems and obsolete equipment, the unit reveals a monolith of raw concrete, pierced with openings to the north and south. Taking advantage of the crossing typology, the mineral materiality, the natural luminosity, and the electromechanical systems essential to the functioning of the habitable space, an architectural device, formed of a serial composition of sliding glass walls, allows fluid reconfigurations, while thwarting perceptions of size. The strategic positioning of domestic equipment maintains constant physical and visual permeability to neutralize the compactness of the unit.


BRUJ «cabinet de curiosités» by Studio Jean Verville architectes. Photograph by Maxime Brouillet.

The modular spatial organization system divides the volumetric entity by structuring mobile boundaries associated with the interchangeability of equipment in order to meet the requirements of organizational and functional adaptability, while maintaining visual porosity. By addition or subtraction, this flexible system fragments the plan into 6 layout alternatives with undetermined functions, offering up to 7 distinct sub-spaces, while flexible blinds with a metallic finish allow the option of openwork borders, as well as total privacy.

The project is based on a reasoned use of materials and components with the aim of limiting resources, types of interventions, and costs. In order to reduce the carbon footprint relating to energy consumption for heating and air conditioning, the proposal uses the thermal inertia of the concrete shell, absorbing both heat of the winter solar radiation and summer night coolness, and then redistributes them gently. While the transversality of the unit and the modular sliding wall system allow a multitude of combinations, they also promote natural ventilation optimizing comfort in summer.

Interacting with reflective, transparent, and metallic surfaces, the multiple reverberations of light create kinetic lighting animating the entire space with plays of light and shadow. Industrial elements, such as unloading dock lamps or commercial restaurant furniture, come together in an eclectic ensemble evoking the alchemist's laboratory, transforming reality into fiction. Glass vials of all kinds, models and various explorations, utilitarian objects, and plants rub shoulders on the shelves, revisiting the spirit of the cabinet of curiosities in a playful presentation of everyday life.

More information

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Architects
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Studio Jean Verville architectes. Lead architect.- Jean Verville.
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Project team
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Studio coordinator, professional and scientific MA architecture candidate.- Gabriel Ladouceur.
Technical specialist.- Guillaume Turgeon Solis.
Artistic advisor.- France Goneau.
Architect.- Tania Paula Garza Rico.
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Collaborators
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Art furniture.- Loïc Bard.
Ceramic sculptures.- France Goneau.
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Client
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Jean Verville.
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Contractor
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Nomad construction (Quebec City).
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Area
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79 sqm.
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Dates
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Construction.- 2023.
Completed.- 2024.
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Location
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Québec, Canada.
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Photography
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Studio Jean Verville architectes consists of a multidisciplinary team working under the direction of architect Tania Paula Garza Rico. The complementary skills of team members contribute to the variability of the Studio's output. Currently, the team is working on the development of a 3,000 m2 dental complex, a research and innovation center for Cannabis, personalized houses and apartments, a forest castle, and an immersive architectural installation for an international public art festival.

Jean Verville. Architect and professor at the School of Architecture at Laval University, Jean Verville draws upon play, humor, and self-mockery in his professional practice, as well as in his teaching approach. A playful creator, it is with apparent lightness and casualness that he presents his thoughts on relationships with domestic space, as well as on the role and capacity of architecture to transform everyday life.

Verville observes the impacts of popular culture with amusement,  inviting individual appropriations that underline the attributes and omnipresence of architectural space. Celebrating the multiplicity of perceptions, his deliberately imperfect digital collages shape baroque fantasies where the discernment between architecture and personal imagination is disputed in order to evoke traces of childhood, including doubt about the veracity of images and the plausible banality of ordinary life.

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Published on: July 9, 2024
Cite: "Exploring physical and visual permeability. BRUJ «cabinet de curiosités» by Studio Jean Verville architectes" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/exploring-physical-and-visual-permeability-bruj-cabinet-de-curiosites-studio-jean-verville-architectes> ISSN 1139-6415
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