SCI Petit Cassia | France
Vandaag, 00:00
roject: SCI Petit Cassia, Boé // France
Architect: Cabinet d'architecture François de La Serre, Boé // France
Fabricator: Sunclear, Bordeaux // France
Installer: Julia Bâtiments // France
Façade system: Riveted/Screwed
Year of construction: 2024
Product: ALUCOBOND® PLUS naturAL Reflect
Photos + Drawings: Inigo Brothers + Julia Bâtiments
How contours disappear
Architect François de La Serre’s office has opted for a simple volume which makes a clear statement and bold gestures for its own company building. The lengthy oblong structure appears to hover above the dense greenery on the banks of the wide River Garonne with its turbid, loamy waters. Clad in corten steel, the building outline is silhouetted against the blue southern skies and the tops of walnut trees. Although the plot is in a good, central location and easily accessible by car, it is still not an ideal building site: the Garonne regularly floods the river meadows, as it did last autumn. But for architect de la Serre, the river is part of his homeland’s DNA, and people here have always lived by it and made their living from it. The location’s proximity to the water and riverside biotope requires those on site to treat the area carefully and respectfully, ? and it also requires taking flood protection measures. The elevated oblong, reminiscent of one of the Constructivist “Cloud Irons”, takes these landscape factors into consideration. To protect the building from water damage and, in turn, ensure the building does not mar the landscape, the architect placed the lengthy, cantilevered structure for his office on top of 10-metre high Y-shaped pylons. This reduces the building footprint and area vulnerable to flooding. At the rear, the oblong is propped on a base building. This will largely disappear behind a green façade in coming years to accentuate the illusion of a floating building, and leaving the powerful contours to dominate the horizon from afar. But viewed from directly beneath, the building dissolves in the reflections on the naturAL Reflect ALUCOBOND® tray panels and lets the diversity and complexity of the surrounding natural world come to the fore. To create the reflective soffit, façade elements were mounted on the building’s underside using the easy fiX system, which enables both quick and efficient installation and also ensures the tray panels present a clean, homogeneous surface effect. New perspectives emerge and draw the eye to often overlooked or unusual details. For instance, the columns’ concrete arms interlace elegantly to form a diamond shape in the reflection. The space beneath the building appears loftier, lighter and airier, the scenery more remarkable, nature more enveloping, and, instead of growing up, the grass now grows down. If another change of perspective is desired, take the long steel grating staircase up to the office level, where, neatly framed by the long ribbon windows, the wild riverscape stretches out in a panorama on three sides. Seen from this bird's-eye perspective, the landscape has neither clear contours, nor precise features; complexity and granular detail vanish. In fact, the water, treetops and sky blur and merge into one another. Do you imagine it is possible to concentrate on work here? In any event, clarity of mind should come about naturally.