‘Les Lodges’ were specifically designed to meet one of the main challenges of building in our time: to produce sustainable, energy-efficient houses, fully integrated in the urban world and contemporary life, and capable of projecting into the future. The project’s originality lies in the scalable architecture of these houses, which can be enlarged by adding on prefabricated wooden modules, extending a 3-room home to 4, 5 or 6 rooms. In principle, all of them can become 6-room houses without increasing the surface area of the property. Scalability is the key to taking up residence in a community or neighbourhood and appropriating a place in a lasting way: it allows the family to grow or the family unit to change and sometimes be blended with another one.

The design involves building a technical core with high thermal inertia on the north side of the house and attaching individual wood-frame rooms that face south and open on to the garden. This modular floor plan can be adapted to different types of houses incorporating the same grid to remain scalable. Each room benefits from natural light. The double height of the living room, directly linked to the entrance, creates a feeling of vast, open space that permeates the whole house. To limit environmental impact, the wood frame and roof are insulated with organic hemp fibre. All wood used for the frame, carpentry, and cladding is sourced from sustainably managed forests (PEFC certified). The houses carry the ‘Passive Building/Passivhaus’ label guaranteeing the highest level of energy efficiency in Europe.