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Architects: Nicolas Gianni Architecte
- Year: 2017
- Photographs: Tomas Photography
Text description provided by the architects. Traditional iconic Corsican heritage indulged with modern glass extension. The site is moving, when the gate opens, we are touched by the beauty and simplicity of the site: intertwined cork oaks, wild olive trees, a huge rock covered with lichen, and at the bottom, planted on a pile of rocks , overlooking the site, a small stone house owned by the owner's family for generations.
The serenity that emanates from this place evokes the culture and heritage of our ancestors. How to make an extension without denaturing this place? Impossible to touch the existing building, we will only remodel the interior... The project includes the creation of a new living space and the requalification of the existing house in the dark.
Our gesture is delicate - we will build a glass bridge hanging on the back of the house. From the plot, nothing changes - the old building still dominates on its rocky peak and one can not guess the intervention ... it is by shifting in front of the entrance of the house that the extension can be seen.
Transparently, it plays with her context, with her limits. It dialogues with the landscape and with the stone house. It changes with the seasons and is colored, imbued with its context, its material, ochres of stone, garden greens, blue sky. Inside, a sensation of vertigo invades us. Here, there are no more limits between the inside and the outside. The magnetic power of the landscape is such that it encourages silence and sometimes forgetfulness of oneself.
This project was a challenge. It had to win, convince the project manager on its cost and reason on the surfaces, challenge companies, build in an area very difficult to access by respecting the environment, and above all, it was necessary to respect the work of our ancestors with a delicate extension which emphasises the strength of the old. Today, the old building is reflected in the glass as if to remind us of our duty to remember ...
