Capuchin Couvent
Capuchin convent metamorphosis & massive stone gallery
Direct mandate - completed
Location | Jura (01) France • Client | Private • Construction manager | Atelier Zou • Type | Heritage regeneration • Construction period | 2022-2024 • Surface area | 800 m² • Program | 68 dwelling • Cost | 900 000 € • photos | 11h45
The project involves the transformation of a former convent, built for the Capuchin brotherhood dating back to the 18th century into an artist residence. The re-appropriation the place is achieved by establishing a connection between the interior spaces and the facades with the cobbled courtyard through monumental openings. On the garden side, a monumental gallery of Hauteville massive stone takes its place and provides the entire north wing a direct relationship with the landscape. Somewhere amidst built intervention and landscape intervention, this monumental gesture creates a transition between the garden at the bottom and the reference level at the top of the living spaces. Initially, there's the commanding scale of the structure, a 35-meter-long gallery, and then its materiality—crafted from solid, monolithic Hauteville stone, forming a spacious belvedere. This excessiveness echoes to the imposing volume of the convent that inevitably calls for a radical intervention. When looking into further detail, the stone gallery takes up several codes of garden art. Thus, the main angle is treated in a quarter-round, a figure found in the 20th-century garden, one of the significant layout motifs of the 18th-century convent construction period. In its contemporary declination, it ensures the formal connection between various parts realized at different periods in order to define a new overall coherence.
Photographs • 11_h_45
