Monday Monday

Trees Through Steel

In Lacaton & Vassal’s early works, such as the Maison Latapie and more explicitly the Cap Ferret House, the decision to let trees pierce floors and roofs is not a whimsical gesture but a radical act of architectural realism rooted in respect, restraint and material pragmatism; the trees, left untouched, are not symbolic ornaments but living elements that reconfigure the domestic space, challenging the legacy of modernist erasure and introducing a quiet form of spatial socialism, where the built environment negotiates with what already exists instead of replacing it, using affordable industrial materials like corrugated steel and polycarbonate to create open, adaptable structures that neither dominate nor romanticize nature, but accept its presence as condition and companion; the house does not conquer the forest but makes room for it, cutting precise holes in slab and ceiling to let trunks continue their path, turning what might be seen as obstacles into structural co-inhabitants, and this operation, executed without spectacle, reveals a kind of design rigor often absent from both technocratic and sentimental approaches to sustainability—here the ethical stance is embedded in construction logic, not slogans, and the result is a domestic space that embodies a political attitude of minimal interference and maximum utility, both modest and generous, where architecture acts more like a host than a master, and where the realism of materials meets the realism of site constraints to form a new language of non-destructive modernity.

Merged With

 

Without disrupting its integrity, and establishing a harmonious spatial rhythm between constructed space and wild landscape, as seen in the aerial view where the edifice curls like a biomorphic shell within a lush tapestry of greenery, while its interior reveals a shaded circular void open to the sky, which operates as a microclimate regulator and spatial anchor that guides movement through the curved corridor that follows the natural flow of the structure, resembling a continuous promenade that blurs the boundary between interior and exterior through the tactility of natural materials like wooden shingles, woven walls, and polished stone, which enhance the sensory connection with the environment and foreground sustainability as a central design ethic, with passive ventilation, shaded perimeters and vegetation acting as thermal buffers, and where the adjacent reflective pool—not just an aesthetic gesture but a climatic tool—cools the air and expands the visual perception of space through its mirrored surface that captures both sky and canopy, making it a fluid interface between architecture and landscape, a quality that resonates with vernacular strategies yet updated through contemporary architectural language, as clearly demonstrated in the way the spiral plan mimics natural patterns like the cucullus of certain plants or shells.