Europe 40 Under 40 Awards Tell a friend
ARCHIVE 2021
Hautvillers, France
Architects: Pierre-Arnaud Descôtes, Lead Architect + Jean-Benoît Vétillard, Associate Architect
Client: Municipality of Hautvillers, Public command, complete mission
Project team: Pierre-Arnaud Descôtes, Jean-Benoît Vétillard, Gabriel Biselli
Landscape Architects: Léa Muller – Itinérances
Program: Refurbishment of an old chapel into cultural amenities, publics spaces and landscaping
Photographer: Giaime Meloni
Size: Chapel 50 m2 + Exterior spaces 2000 m2
The site originally offered a collection of vernacular architectures: an abandoned house, an old chapel, a cellar, a series of steps forming a natural amphitheater, old orchards, and terraced gardens. The as-found site stands as a collection of unique objects within their natural context.
These architectures already had qualities that profoundly anchored them to the site — their history, their traditional design, and their hyper- materiality respectively.
However, the existing relationship between these architectural elements and the surrounding landscape had been altered, due to transformations over time.
Working on the concept of memory, our proposal enables the on-site entities to regain their visibility and their structuring role within the landscape.
Research of a common link between interior and exterior, work on the treatment of a continuous ground, an archipelago of micro-interventions and devices, answer to the complexity of the site, its existing morphology, and its potential of appropriation by visitors.
