The house is characterized by the use of metallic steel elements superimposed between a series of platforms and perforations, in a palette of greiges tones, creating a structural monolithism that breaks with the entry of light and shadows across different surfaces giving rise to a large picture of theatrical expressiveness with new views and perspectives full of dynamism where the interactions of family life itself are incorporated, creating a complete hybridization of coexistence between both worlds in a single space.
Description of project by Jean Verville Architecte
The architect Jean Verville explores a world where architecture, theatricality, and joy come together to imagine a hybrid proposal where sensory perceptions are called to transgress the limits of three-dimensional form, and where living spaces seem liberated from their reality.
Throughout the process, clients, creators, and actors Sophie Cadieux and Mani Soleymanlou, through their creativity, mastery of the inseparable collaborative dimension of theatrical work, and talent for improvisation, embrace the playful approach of the architect with passion. , rigor and sensitivity. With the help of his accomplice, the architect Tania Paula Garza Rico, director of his homonymous studio, Verville creates a whimsical staging, incorporating the presence of allegories of creatures. Facing the lens of the photographer, architects and their clients engage in this exercise with enthusiasm, humor, and unpredictability. With this raw material, Verville performs digital manipulation to produce images that raise questions about the illusory banality of habitability.
«An extraordinary creative experience, from the first meeting to this final staging ... I constantly laugh as I remember that day!»
Mani Soleymanlou.
Adopting the creative universes of its occupants, their personalities, and their joint needs as a narrative scheme, the MSO project consists of a complete volumetric reconfiguration, allowing the generation of artistic creation as well as a living space adapted to the daily reality of the two artists and their son. . Inside a narrow house, located in a residential neighborhood of Montreal, a scenic walk unfolds throughout the height of the building.
Having to satisfy the needs of family life, but also subtracting them at times to create a work environment that enhances concentration and creativity, the spatial rearrangement conceals the functions in a succession of ordered volumes completed by ten scenic pauses. The central space, traversed by an openwork steel structure that extends over twelve meters in height, suppresses the original hierarchy in a dynamic segmentation, while the monochrome of greige tones unites the whole in a monolithic entity.
«Every moment we discover something new, a new cut, a new line. It is a tremendous gift.»
Sophie Cadieux.
«But where is my room?»
Oscar.
With the objective of an effective coexistence of domestic and professional activities, the permeability to family life, and spatial distribution that provides a level of individual privacy, the proposal takes advantage of decompartmentalization to consolidate the feeling of unification in its vertical deployment and metamorphose the legibility of the whole.
To minimize alterations to the existing building, the selective subtraction of floor areas frees the core of the space to accommodate the new vertical progression, gradually unfolding over the three floors of the house in a succession of ten versatile and multifunctional platforms. These ten scenic breaks establish a new spatial organization. The metal structure, with perforated steel surfaces and walls, is juxtaposed with a series of stages and raised platforms - sometimes it offers a small scene, and sometimes a seat - to draw fluid boundaries that privatize the spaces creating visual porosity.
Fulfilling the requirement of functional adaptability while minimizing the need for furniture, the new spatial organization system involves unusual interactions to facilitate the personal and creative appropriation of the subspaces it configures. Fragmented by metal partitions and low walls, and punctuated meanders, the scenic pauses offer new points of view in space and new perspectives on the presence of others. The imposing metal assembly, which also consolidates the structural integrity of the project, is finished off with a skylight, 2.5 meters by 2.5 meters, which maximizes natural light by diffusing it towards the ground floor.
The light, filtered by the metal surfaces and walls, multiplies the projections of shadows projected to mark the space with graphic lines, opposing its presence with the spatial limits, and offering a continuous dance of geometric shadows that play on the monochrome canvas. Refined and expressive, the proposal constitutes an assemblage that divides volume and light to envelop the place in a mysterious aura that contributes to the theatricality of the proposed experiment.
