Floquet House

Set in 532 m² of land, it features 252 m² Loi Carrez (447 m² floor area) on two levels.

The entrance is via a garage on the first floor of a condominium house facing the street. The façade, with its classical modenature, contrasts with the industrial aesthetics of the Maison Floquet, located in the second row of the plot.

The adjoining first floor opens onto a vast 78.5 m² conservatory with glass roof, a 64 m² living room with partially-separated kitchen, a wooden terrace and a 130 m² garden. A sauna, wine cellar, laundry room and storage space complete this level.

The first floor, organized around the winter garden void, comprises three bedrooms, including a master suite with bathroom and terrace, a shower room and a multi-purpose room converted into a games room, library and office.

At the far end of the plot, a two-storey workshop offers an attractive space for investment and restoration.

The house is located in a sought-after area of Bordeaux, close to the city center and its lively streets. It benefits from all local amenities, including shops, schools and healthcare facilities.

The winter garden, beautifully planted and largely open to the sky, forms a light well at the heart of the structure, generously illuminating all the living spaces. Its walls of unfinished corrugated iron create a play of texture, light and shadow, and reflect the color of the sky through zenithal skylights.

The raw materials used – corrugated iron and concrete – are given a boost by bold flat tones of color, creating a warm and inviting environment where the contemporary blends with the industrial past of the existing building.

The former cookie factory that originally occupied the plot was opaque and offered a dark volume, with no view of the outside. The architects chose to remove part of the roof to create a garden between the walls, letting natural light into the building and creating an outdoor space. In the center of the structure, the roof tiles were removed and replaced by glass roofs to create a winter garden. These opening skylights also ensure ventilation of the interior volume, and are covered with stretched canvas on hot summer days.

The Maison Floquet is one of the agency’s very first renovation projects. The decision to transform and enhance existing buildings rather than demolish them in order to rebuild them is a hallmark of their approach to construction, based on economy of means, materials, resources and energy.

Graduates of the Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture of Bordeaux in 1980, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal set up their practice there in 1987. They built their first projects in the Bordeaux region, mainly detached houses (six were delivered between 1993 and 2005), all laboratories for a radical approach to architecture, based on ethics and economy of means.They moved to Paris in 2000 to work on the Palais de Tokyo project, and went on to sign a number of major projects, including the Sciences de Gestion university center in Bordeaux, the Nantes School of Architecture, the FRAC Nord-Pas-de-Calais in Dunkirk, the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris (with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin), and the renovation of buildings G, H and I at the Grand Parc in Bordeaux.

The Lacaton & Vassal practice was awarded the Grand Prix national d’architecture in 2008, the Equerre d’Argent in 2011 for the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre project, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture at the Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine in 2018, the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 2019 and the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2021.