Response to climate
One aspect of the gentle harmony of Gray and Badovici’s
design is its sensitivity to the variable climate of the south
coast of France. In ways found in traditional architecture,
they were conscious of what is now, eighty years later, called
‘sustainability’. The house can be changed to respond to different
conditions. These include fierce sun, the vicious and
mind-disturbing Mistral wind, and grey, drizzly winter days.
Badovici patented a window system (2) that allows for
all the permutations I outlined in ‘A Hotel Terrace Doorway’
(Doorway, 2007, pages 168–9). The casements are divided
2
section
elevation
plan
into slim vertical panes that can be folded back against the
jambs or pillars, leaving the opening completely clear for
ventilation. On the outside of the windows there are rails on
which run louvred shutters that can be slid across to provide
varying degrees of shade. Some of these have hinged panels
to provide even finer gradations of ventilation.
The large openings to the terrace are fitted with folding
windows so that the living space can be opened directly to
the sea. The terrace itself is provided with a slim framework
of steel posts and rails onto which fabric (sail cloth?) can be
stretched to provide shade.
Elsewhere (as mentioned in the ‘Description’) doorways
are positioned to be protected from the Mistral, and windows
to allow cross ventilation on sultry summer nights. Some of the
doorways are provided with two or three leaves – a metal door
for security, a louvre panel for ventilation and a mesh to keep
out mosquitoes. These, as with the window system, can be
arranged in different permutations for different circumstances.
The subtle mechanics of providing environmental comfort
have aesthetic dimensions too. Gray and Badovici write
of enjoying the light from the fire along with the daylight,
and, on a grey drizzly day, of closing the view to the sea and
opening that to the old village and dripping lemon trees on
the slope immediately behind the house.
Transition, hierarchy, heart
Gray and Badovici’s acknowledgement of the centrality of
the person – the inhabitant – stretches to using architecture
to manipulate (orchestrate) experience and to alter the way
the world appears. In discussing Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à