Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

French studio Perraudin Architecture has completed a social housing complex with solid stone walls near Toulouse as part of a bid to prove that “anything that is built today could be built in stone” (+ slideshow).

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

Perraudin Architecture, which also recently completed a stone house in Lyon, specified huge 40 centimetre-wide blocks of limestone for the walls of the three-storey building located within a new residential district of Cornebarrieu, north-west of Toulouse.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

“Stone is the most abundantly available material on earth,” said architect Marco Lammers. “It is an extremely energy-efficient resource […] and, when used with intelligence, it can be cheaper than concrete.”

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

The studio treated this project as a case study to test whether stone can be used for buildings that need to adhere to both a tight budget and strict energy-saving requirements, and managed to deliver on both counts.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

According to the architect, the load-bearing stone walls will provide a natural air conditioning system that absorbs excess heat and releases it gradually.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

“The result is a truly contemporary stone architecture, rooted in the economy of simplicity and the pure tectonic art and pleasure of building,” said Lammers.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

No paint or plaster was added to the walls, so the stone surfaces are left bare to display traces of the quarrying process. Projecting courses of stone on the exterior mark the boundaries between floors and help to direct rainwater away from the windows.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

A total of 2o apartments are contained within the building. Bedrooms are positioned along the northern facade, allowing living rooms to be south-facing and open out to sunny terraces.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

Larch was used for doors, window frames and shutters throughout the complex, and are expected to show signs of ageing over time.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

Perraudin Architecture is now working on the next phase of the project, which will involve the construction of a larger housing complex using the same materials palette.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

Photography is by Damien Aspe and Serge Demailly.

Here’s more information from Perraudin Architecture:


Massive Stone Social Housing, Cornebarrieu, France

Since its rediscovery of stone Perraudin Architecture has come to believe that anything that is built today could be built in stone.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

After realising several massive stone buildings – including wineries, single housing and a school campus – the opportunity to build 20 social housing units in Cornebarrieu provided an excellent test case. Is it possible, to truly build in stone within the strictest of economical and energetic restrictions? With a brief featuring both a very limited budget of 1150 euro/m² and the strict demand to be granted the label ‘Very High Energetic Performance’ within the French standard of High Environmental Quality?

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

The result is a truly contemporary stone architecture, rooted in the economy of simplicity and the pure tectonic art and pleasure of building. An architecture made to age and made to last, searching to exploit to its maximum the great visual, environmental and structural qualities of its used materials.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

The building is entirely built up in load-bearing limestone walls of 40 cm. Precise coursing elevations define each stone, to be extracted, dimensioned and numbered in the quarry and then transported to the site. There, they are assembled like toy blocks using nothing but a thin bed of lime mortar.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture

Each detail is a true stone detail. Large openings are formed by flat arcs with keys stones. Window sills are dimensioned in limestone. All perforations for ducts and for descending the rainwater from the roof are included in the coursing plan and carried out at the quarry. At the height of the concrete floor slabs ‘cornices’ project rainwater free off the building’s walls all the while doubling as guide rail for the blinds.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
Construction image

The building is located at the outskirts of Cornebarrieu, a town within the metropolitan area of Toulouse. It is part a new residential neighbourhood extending the town towards its forested western edge.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
Detailed diagram one – click for larger image

It is based on a series of simple principles, which we have come to apply and refine over time. All materials are left untreated. As much as possible, all materials are left untreated, with no paint, no plaster. The woodwork is in larch, left to age with time. The stone acts as natural air conditioning, its thermal mass absorbing and releasing surplus heat and humidity. For reasons of comfort and ventilation, the housing units are systematically continuous from facade to facade.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
Detailed diagram two – click for larger image

The bedrooms are in the north to take advantage of the summer freshness while on the south side a large terrace extends the living room, with nothing but a glass wall as separation. The staircases remain in open air and to enter the apartment one enters by the loggia. Flexible blinds protect this terrace and allow it to be used as a buffer-space softening climatic variations.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
3D diagram – click for larger image

Life within this housing unit moves with the weather, one can activate and deactivate its great thermal mass while spaces change dynamically from being inside to outside according to the seasonal comfort.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
Ground floor plan – click for larger image

The project has been nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2013, the Equerre d’Argent 2011, and was winner of the Prix Développement Durable – Concours d’architecture Pierre Naturelle 2011.

Social housing with solid stone walls by Perraudin Architecture
Upper floor plan – click for larger image

Furthermore, the building has been finished within budget with its stone construction finishing well ahead of schedule. Due to this success, we are currently building the second phase of the development – 86 collective and individual housing units, partly social – using the same construction method and a budget below 1000 euro/m².

The post Social housing with solid stone walls
by Perraudin Architecture
appeared first on Dezeen.

House made of solid stone in Lyon by Perraudin Architecture

French studio Perraudin Architecture has constructed a family house out of solid stone, claiming the material is “cheaper and faster” to build with than concrete.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

Architect Marco Lammers said limestone had been chosen for economic reasons. “Stone itself is not an expensive resource,”  he said. “Its manufacturing is. Therefore, the greater its mass, the lower its price and the greater its qualities.”

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

The house is located in Croix Rousse in Lyon – a dense former silk-weaving district – and is positioned in a small backland plot behind an art gallery.

Perraudin Architecture designed the building to match the typical local architecture, which features solid stone walls and windows large enough to fit silk looms through.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

“Massive stone – when used with intelligence – allows to build cheaper and faster than ‘classical’ construction methods like […] concrete,” the architects claim.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

Lammers told Dezeen that using stone for load-bearing construction is far more efficient than applying it as a cladding material and creates energy-efficient buildings without high price tags.

“When used constructively in its raw massive form, stone is load-bearing, has great qualities of thermal mass, absorbs and releases surplus humidity, does not degrade and thus literally makes timeless architecture,” he said.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

“Arguably, the least intelligent use of stone thinkable is to cut it in thin slices and to hang it decoratively on structural walls,” he added.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

The two-storey residence has an L-shaped plan that wraps around a small garden and swimming pool. Both floors feature floor-to-ceiling windows, and the stone walls are left exposed on the inside as well as the outside.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

Ground floor spaces are arranged in a sequence where large family rooms are broken up by utility areas such as bathrooms and closets. These smaller spaces sit within compact stone volumes that support the flat roof overhead.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

The architect added: “As stone is a subtractive rather than additive material, the domestic landscape architecture has a vocabulary of rifts, carvings, cracks and recesses.”

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

Here’s more information from Perraudin Architecture:


Massive stone house, Lyon – Croix Rousse, France

This single family house finds itself in the hearth of Croix-Rousse, one of the densest neighbourhoods of Europe. The quarter is heavily marked by its thousands of former home-workshops of the “canuts” – the silk weavers of the 19th century Lyonnais silk manufacturing.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture

An urban tissue of high, massive stone buildings with large window openings carrying heavy oak floor structures that allow for the high open spaces needed for the Jacquard looms that were used for weaving the silk tissue.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
Axonometric diagram

Located in a hearth of a housing block at the back of the art gallery it extends, the possibilities to build are strictly limited by complex urban regulations. Therefore, the envelope of the house follows exactly the authorised maximum volume, with its spaces ‘carved out’ of this given envelope.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
Exploded axonometric diagram

Within this rigid shell, the spaces are positioned one after the other forming a continuous scenic route. Due to the limited depth of the maximum envelope, the layout is organised as alternating service and served spaces, with the service-spaces (bathroom, storage, stairs, toilets…) forming massive blocks of stone that support the roof. With its reinforced contrast between mass and emptiness, between lightness and darkness, with its pierced and recessing mass, the playful and liberated inner world contrasts strongly with the outer world blocked in regulation.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
Axonometric diagram of stone structure

Being closer to physical geography than to architecture, the service blocks arrange themselves in a route connecting and separating one living space from another. As stone is a subtractive rather than additive material, the “domestic landscape architecture” has a vocabulary of rifts, carvings, cracks and recesses.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
Isometric detail

The service blocks define by contrast the living voids, orienting them towards the small garden they surround. The freshness generated by the basin completes this architectural geography.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
Ground floor plan

Structurally, all floors are supported by the service blocks, with each block uniquely built up out of massive – structural – stone. The large blocks of dimension stone making up its masonry have been sculpted and assembled block by block after being cut precisely in the quarry. Delivered element by element, they were quickly mounted as if it were blocks in a toy building game.

Stone house in Lyon's silk-weaving district by Perraudin Architecture
First floor plan

About Perraudin Architecte and the use of massive stone as primary construction material

Perraudin Architecture is an office with a long history in forefront sustainable architecture – with as most notable example the Akademie Mont Cenis (Herne, Germany, 1999, awarded with the Holzbaupreis and the European Solar Prize, Prize for Solar Building and of the first large energy-neutral buildings).

Since 1998 the office rediscovered massive, structural stone as contemporary building material, starting to use a standardised module of large blocks of 2,00 x 1,00 x 0,50 meter of massive stone – or half of the unit size of stone as extracted directly from a quarry – as primary (structural) building material. Since, the office has proved the potential of massive stone as an elegant, sustainable, economical, and widely available local material in numerous of its buildings.

Most notable is the construction of 20 units of social housing in Cornebarrieu (project nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2013, the Equerre d’Argent 2011, and winner of the Prix Développement Durable – Concours d’architecture Pierre Naturelle 2011). It proves massive stone – when used with intelligence – allows to build cheaper and faster than ‘classical’ construction methods like the use of armed concrete, all the while using very limited energy to extract and place (dry construction!) and having great tectonic and tactile qualities.

As each building we had built so far was based on the rather strict geometric base, this massive stone house in Lyon was the first project to allow us to demonstrate the extreme flexibility of stone, exploiting to the maximum its plastic qualities.

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by Perraudin Architecture
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