Contemporary house

The house, built on a 5000m2 plot planted with old oak trees and an orchard, follows a semi-circular plan, in harmony with nature. On one level, it comprises a kitchen opening onto two patios, a large 38 m² living room with fireplace, a bedroom with bathroom and two bedrooms with shower rooms. In the living room, a Roger Tallon-inspired wooden spiral staircase leads to the library in the tower. The property is completed by a large outbuilding comprising a workshop and a car port.

Situated in the Gers, this house is set in very pleasant surroundings, in the heart of unspoilt countryside. It has a commanding view over the rolling countryside. The house stands on the edge of a small village with a school. Just 11 km from the house, L’Aire-sur-l’Adour offers a wide range of shops, schools and amenities. Pau and its airport are just 45 minutes from the house.

This low-slung, curvaceous house has clean lines that blend magnificently into the landscape, set off by a tower. With its facades of Goave pebbles, a raw, natural material in shades of grey, the house looks like a rock set in nature.

The architecture plays on the links between inside and outside: the generously glazed facades open up the house to its natural surroundings. All the rooms have large windows giving direct access to the patios or garden.

Bernard Saillol is a self-taught architect, accredited by the French Ministry of Culture in 1979, in the same way as the famous architects Le Corbusier, Ricardo Bofill and Tadao Ando before him.

He has designed many houses in the Aquitaine region: contemporary houses characterised by the use of natural materials, such as the Lachaud house in Beaumont, built in brick and wood in 1976, the Verdier house (Beaumont, 1973), in stone and concrete, or the Castenet house, a troglodyte stone house built in Sergeac in 1983.

The integration of the house with its natural surroundings, as well as the asymmetry, horizontality and use of pebbles, link this house to the organic architecture of Fallingwater (Pennsylvania, 1939) or Frank Lloyd Wright’s David Wright House (Phoenix, 1950). Bernard Saillol’s house, like this organic house built on rocks in the middle of a waterfall, perfectly illustrates the theories of the famous architect of the Guggenheim Museum, who advocated “a return to nature to ensure the harmonious development of the individual”.

Breaking with the rationalism and orthogonality of the modern era, Bernard Saillol has adopted an organic approach to architecture, focusing on the relationship with the site and the construction system. The architect uses simple, curved modern lines and natural materials such as pebbles to integrate the house into its surroundings.