Ingenious French home wins 2012 RIBA Manser Medal for best newly designed private house

Date:

13 October 2012

Press office contact:

Beatrice Cooke
T: +44 (0)207 307 3813
E: beatrice.cooke@riba.org

Maison L, the dramatic addition to an 18^th century orangery creating an innovative contemporary house on the outskirts of Paris, has scooped the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) prestigious Manser Medal 2012 for the best newly designed private house. The presentation of the award to the winning architects, architectures possibles, took place at a dinner in Manchester this evening, hosted by BBC Radio 4’s Mark Lawson.

An 18^th Century orangery on an undulating site in Ile de France has undergone a major restoration and extension to become an exceptional new house. Interconnecting half-buried rooms arranged in an L-shaped plan incorporate five three-storey flat-roofed concrete bedroom and bathroom towers - one for each of the four children plus their parents. Architect Christian Pottgiesser (architectures possibles architects) has responded to the extremely challenging site and uncompromising brief to create a home that surprises and delights but has minimal impact on the mature landscape in which it is set.

Speaking about Maison L, RIBA President Angela Brady said:

“Maison L is a stunningly original house that creatively responds to the needs of its household – here everyone has their own private bedroom tower, but can come together in the most dramatic cave-like family rooms. The modern extension is sensitive to the 18^th Century orangery it extends and to the mature French landscape in which it sits. The courage of the family and the ingenuity of the architect combine to create the most exceptional project. This is no ordinary home.”

The four other houses that were shortlisted for the 2012 RIBA Manser Medal are:

The Dune House in Thorpeness, Suffolk by Jarmund Vigsnaes Architects & Mole Architects
Private house in Gloucestershire by Found Associates
Private house in East Sussex by Duggan Morris Architects
Two Passive Solar Gain Houses, Porthadown, Cornwall by Simon Conder Associates

Previous winners of the RIBA Manser Medal include Duggan Morris Architects with a modern conversion of a brutalist house in Hampstead (2011), Acme for Hunsett Mill (2010), Pitman Tozer Architects for The Gap House (2009), Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners for Oxley Woods (2008) and Alison Brooks Architects for the Salt House (2007).

This year’s judges were: Michael Manser CBE RA PPRIBA Chairman of The Manser Practice, architect; Stuart Piercy, architect; client Lady Ritblat; David Scott, National Trust Councillor and Tony Chapman, Hon FRIBA, RIBA Head of Awards.

The Architects’ Journal is media partner for the RIBA Awards and special awards and trade media partner for the RIBA Stirling Prize. The Observer is national media partner for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Notes to editors

1.For images, interviews and more information about the RIBA Manser Medal please contact Beatrice Cooke at the RIBA on 020 7307 3813; or beatrice.cooke@inst.riba.org|

2.Images of Maison L can be downloaded here: https://www.box.com/s/c7baglc0otmpcqsj86tp|

3. Judges’ citation for the winning house:

Maison L

Ile de France

Architect: architectures possibles

Structural Engineer: Joel Betito

Contractor: Les Constructeurs de Suresnes

Date of completion: August 2011

Gross internal area: 616 sq m

In the corner of an undulating site of a former chateau, close to Versailles, is a heavily restored orangery whose origins can be traced back to the late 18th Century. This was home to a couple with four children. The couple called in the German born, French trained architect Christian Pottgiesser to extend it. The difficult brief called for an extension which impacted as little as possible on views from the orangery and on the mature landscape in which it is set. This suggested the L-shaped general plan and the use of an indigenous stone for retaining walls. But it did not suggest half-burying a series of interconnecting cave-like rooms nor the five three storey board marked concrete towers that poke out of the rockery-roof. This is where the ingenuity of the architect comes in.

The local building code sets an 8 metre height limit (The Orangery is 7), so the architect has buried two metres of the linking building under the sloping site, allowing light in on the leading edge but meaning most of that accommodation does not count within the 8. The code also calls for a gabled or hipped roof but it does allow, in exceptional cases, flat roofs as long as they do not exceed 25 square metres each (clearly they were thinking garage). Thus five three-storeyed tower-like structures were designed, one room per floor with the circulation winding up through them providing dressing/storage, bathroom and bedroom. And by stealing a little off each of the young people’s towers the architects have made a somewhat grander (though still tiny) tower for the parents and planted a roof terrace on top from which there are great views not only of the garden and the district but of “La Défense”, the business district of the modern Paris with its own grown-up skyscrapers.

This is masterful house-making by an ingenious architect who saw the opportunities presented by the most unpromising of briefs and brought a little bit of San Gimignano to this corner of the Ile de France and made an originally sceptical client and his family more than happy.

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