Description
This modern house is one of a group of 12 detached houses built in 1968 by architect Jean-Pierre Watel. It is a reference to the architecture of American houses from the 1950s, such as those designed by the famous architects Philip Johnson and Richard Neutra, with clear, low volumes open to the outside, letting nature into the home.
With a floor area of 105.92 m², this single-storey house comprises an entrance hall, a lounge with study area, a kitchen, three bright bedrooms and two bathrooms. All rooms have French windows opening directly onto the garden.
Contemporary architecture close to an unspoilt natural park.
Located in Longpont-sur-Orge, it is in the charming Château district. Close to shops, schools and public transport, it benefits from a very pleasant environment.
The architecture plays on the links between inside and outside: the large glass façades open the house onto the two flower-filled gardens, giving it a great deal of charm. It is set in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood that is very popular with families.
Contemporary architecture close to an unspoilt natural park.
Jean-Pierre Watel
Trained at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts and the Ecole Saint-Luc in Tournai, he set up his own agency in 1963. Based in Villeneuve d’Ascq, it is best known for the middle-class houses it built in the Lille region in the 1970s and 1980s, which marked the success of modern housing, with forms inspired by northern European architecture. Jean-Pierre Watel was also involved in the urban development of the new town of Villeneuve d’Ascq, before devoting himself to housing programmes on Reunion Island.
This modern house is typical of Jean-Pierre Watel’s architecture, with its assertive horizontality, fluidity of space and large glazed walls, like the Beylier houses in Villeneuve d’Ascq (1970) and the Wallaert houses in Wasquehal (1971).
Jean-Pierre Watel’s houses are inspired by the Danish architecture of Arne Jacobsen, Jorgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert, who laid the foundations of Scandinavian organic modernism: horizontal houses in harmony with nature, like the Rothenborgs house (1930). This house also evokes the clean lines, large windows and horizontality of American houses from the 1950s, such as the Tatum house built by Hugh Smallen in 1962 in New Canaan – a town considered to be the ‘Mecca’ of modernism.
