Description
An experimental house in the middle of the forest
This house is part of a remarkable group of four experimental houses built between 1968 and 1982 by architect Jean Daladier. Located near Sens, 1h30 from Paris, these houses with their complex and innovative geometry are set in the heart of a preserved natural environment.
Distinct from the other three houses in its form and purpose, the Ermitage is not a prototype of modular structures for large-scale projects, but a dwelling house built for Jean Daladier’s own use.
The house spans an area of 132 sqm. The ground floor comprises an entrance hall, a large kitchen-dining room, a vast living room, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a bicycle storage room and a boiler room. Upstairs is a small ‘chapel’, a refined space with curved lines, lit by a vertical window, that could be converted into a bedroom or relaxation area.
The houses are located in the heart of the Saint-Julien forest, 140 kilometres from Paris on the Autoroute du Sud, just a few kilometres from the medieval village of Saint-Julien-du-Sault.
Architecture and spirituality
Driven by his passion for contemplation and spirituality, the architect designed a stretched-out building, all convex and concave curves, with a roof spread out like a taut sail. He drew inspiration from Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, the work of Alvar Aalto and the Grande Chartreuse monastery in Isère.
Jean Daladier worked meticulously on the landscaping of his house, which appears enclosed in his garden and incorporated into the shoreline of a circular lake with an island accessible via a wooden footbridge.
An exceptional experimental ensemble
Conceived as prototypes for collective projects, these individual villas with their new geometries respond to a dream: that of an architecture that is modular and infinitely extensible, respectful of nature and in osmosis with it, achieving a synthesis between material life and spirituality.
While the 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of alternative research in architecture, the use of concrete to create habitable geodesic domes was rare, making the Daladier houses an exceptional example of this type of architecture raised to the level of habitable sculpture.
Of the four houses that make up this unique ensemble, three are currently available for sale: the “Trois Coupoles” house, the “Géode” house and, if all three houses are purchased together, the “Ermitage” house. Each house is set in its own clearing, within a protected wood rich in biodiversity.
Celebrating the home as a space for permanent reinvention, these houses, which have been listed as Historic Monuments since 2014, are now looking for a buyer who loves architecture and nature, and who will be able to rekindle their creative power to enjoy an exceptional and inspiring living environment.
Jean Daladier: an avant-garde architect
When Jean Daladier began building the ‘Trois Coupoles’ house in 1967, he had followed an atypical self-taught path, nurtured by commitment, travel and encounters with resistance fighters Bernard and Geneviève Anthonioz, writer André Malraux, art collector Dominique de Ménil, actors Jean Vilar and Tania Balachova, architect Le Corbusier, painters Jean Degottex and Roberto Matta, and musician Iannis Xenakis.
Alongside his work on new structures, Jean Daladier devoted a large part of his time to saving and restoring old Parisian buildings between Place Maubert and the Seine: Quai de la Tournelle, Quai de Montebello, Rue de Bièvre and Rue Maître Alber, and Rue des Grands Degrés, buildings that had been threatened with demolition in the 1960s and had become prestigious. For him, the two fields are by no means dissociated: “to bring a 16th-century house back to life, it’s not a question of meticulously restoring what may have existed; you have to use what can be saved to create a balanced space, habitable today by the people of our time, and which they in turn will leave their mark on”.
Jean Daladier’s avant-garde reflections on the notions of space and time included new relationships between architecture, painting, town planning and music. Many artists worked in his experimental houses, and a number of artistic personalities such as musicians Iannis Xenakis and Marie-Françoise Bucquet occupied them.
