This house was commissioned by Mr. Maurice Pompon in the early 1950s for his family of five. The architects took full advantage of the site’s constraints, including the narrow plot and surrounding buildings. They designed a structure with geometric lines, featuring a reinforced concrete frame and roof trusses, filled with hollow bricks. The double-pitched roof with a central gutter was covered with zinc during its 2002 renovation.

A glass façade with a unique arrangement of windows, preceded by a balcony shielded from view by the projecting side walls, floods both levels with natural light. To fully benefit from this transparency, the living spaces are arranged on split levels around a central axis formed by the staircase. The orientation of the openings was carefully designed to preserve the residents’ privacy while ensuring ample light in the living areas. Originally, the skylight was protected from summer overheating and winter cold by an ingenious system of retractable interior and exterior blinds.

Born in 1925 and passing away in 2001, Jean Kling was a French architect and urban planner whose work remains little known. After a brief period at Le Corbusier’s studio, he enrolled at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, graduating in 1950.

His involvement in the Firminy-Vert project, famous for its Corbusian Unité d’Habitation, is particularly noteworthy. After forming a friendship with the Franco-Hungarian architect André Sive, Kling contributed to the project in accordance with the principles of the Athens Charter (1933). In 1953, he was also commissioned to study the boiler system that would supply both domestic hot water and heating to the entire complex, which was completed in 1959 and entered the Heritage Protection Zone for Architecture, Urban Planning, and Landscape in 2006.