First wall

The first wall goes up. The ground floor party wall to the north of the house.

With the ground floor poured The Skater can now really start to imagine the space he will inhabit.

A role play game with an imaginary staircase.

'I'm now walking up the stairs and I turn the corner into my bedroom'.

(Tubular formwork for the rear façade column)


He examines carefully all of the forms and changes of level in the concrete asking pointed questions in an effort to understand the finished project. His motives are revealed when delicately he asks the question as to wether the corners and edges, along which a skateboard could slide, will stay.

Hidden from memory

The Client visited the site on Sunday. A perfume of barbecue accompanied her visit. In T-shirts, some of the local population were out and about in their gardens, sneaking in a positive Global Warming opportunity to grill a few endangered species.

The ground floor slab has been poured. Only the starter bars mark where the future walls will be. With the next stage The Architect can start to forget the overwhelming extravaganza of concrete and steel that the The Engineer and the Soil Consultant deemed necessary to stop The Clients modest house sinking forever without trace into the alluvail deposits of the nearby river. Hidden from memory below the ground it will stay, until, as The Builder so eloquently puts it 'Some poor sod decides to demolish it in a hundred years time!'

Archeoligists examining the ruins will assume from their calculations that a building of at least ten storeys dominated the surrounding primitive settlement......a lighthouse? a fire station? a folly?

Ground floor slabs and garages

Yesterday it rained and the site was closed. Today the ground floor is being prepared. A proprietry system, consisting of precast joists and polystyrene filler blocks, spans the 5 metres between the two ground beams that mark the façade. Tomorrow afternoon the concrete will be poured to complete the floor structure for the entrance hall, the passage under the house and the garage.

The planning requirements stipulated that each new house must have a double garage. With the flood regulation a garage is the only use allowed for the ground floor. So there we have it, a ground floor almost entirely devoted to the car (and one or two bicycles).

The Client will be the proud owner of a double garage she doesn't need. She has a car, for which she has very little respect, considering it a heap of metal and a liability. As far as she is concerned the car can stay outside on the pavement. Bringing a car in out of the rain, in her eyes, is very probably seen as a sign of anal retention.
You can oblige people to build off road parking in the suburbs but can you enforce their use? The popularity of a Mayor that installed parking meters in a suburban residential street would take a serious nose dive. So what is the purpose of obliging off road parking? Maybe I'm missing something - could it be that once you have built your obligatory double garage the ratable value of your house is increased and consequently you pay more tax. As this is the national sport I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe the offroad parking means you can have more room for planting trees in the street? Does the double garage incite the purchase of yet more cars. Anyone know the answer?

Regional variations

Everything goes pear shaped. The Engineer is having kittens concerning the structure of the upperfloors. He wants to build the whole house in reinforced concrete.

Global Village does not apply when it comes to the most essential of building materials. Plasterboard is ubiqutous, glass is universal, but bricks and mortar and all the variations which come under the general heading of masonry, or, what in a nutshell, you use to build a wall, seem to be an issue of identity and regional pride. The preference runs deep and beyond the mere appearance of a material.
I have, apparently, chosen a building material that is used in abondance in Alsace and beyond but not here. In the eyes of The Engineer it is completely inappropriate for our region and will only lead to court cases and gnashing of teeth.
There's a pregnant silence as if I had suggesting we build an igloo on the Cote d’Azur. I have a flash of inspiration and for one brief moment consider suggesting that instead we use straw bales and rammed earth with hand applied cowpat render. The natural mistrust of french building engineers faced with whimsical architects would only have been compounded by my dose of british humour. I beat a hasty retreat and suggest that we meet with the manufacturer in order to iron out any misgivings he might have. As I hang up the phone I'm already mentally doing sums on the likely extent of the contractors reaction to building the house completely in reinforced concrete. Oh la la !

Talonettes de longrine

The 'talonettes' (which form the lower surface for the formwork for the ground beams) mark the position of the major structural walls. (the photo shows the 'talonettes' for the future walls either side of the entrance stair.

It is now possible to see the footprint of the house. The plan is a long rectangle, roughly 12m by 5m that stretches from one site boundary to the other. According to The Neighbour, who is retired and seems to be taking a great interest in the comings and goings on site, the proportions of the plan left the JCB driver somewhat perplex. He couldn't understand why the house did not extend further back into the site.

The site is relatively small, 243 sq.m (approx. 2 400 square feet). At the time of the planning application a coefficient of 0,5 (Coéficient d'Occupation des Sols) was in force. This meant that the upper limit of the gross constructible floor area for the house was limited to half of the site area, 121 sq. m. An urban ceiling restriction limits the maximum height of the building and a prospect regulation limits the height within a zone of 8m from the rear boundary. The flood regulation pushes the habitable space up above the 1910 and 1950 flood levels. When these factors are combined, the constructible volume leaves very little room for manoeuvre. The form of the house is practically determined by the urban code.

Talonnettes de longrine

Les talonnettes en béton, qui forment le fond de coffrage pour les longrines, marquent l'implantation des principaux murs de la structure.
Il est maintenant possible de voir le plan de la maison, un rectangle de 12m par 5m qui s'étend entre les deux limites sparatives. D'après Le Voisin, qui est à la retraite et qui est disponible pour tenir informé l'Architecte des allers retours sur le chantier, les proportions du plan de notre maison ont laissé le conducteur de pelleteuse perplexe. Il ne comprenait pas pourquoi notre maison ne prenez pas d'avantage de surface sur l'arrière de la parcelle.
Le terrain est relativement petit, 243m2. A la date du dépôt de la demande de Permis de Construire il y avait un COS de 0,5. Cela veut dire que la surface maximale, hors oeuvre net, constructible sur le terrain était limitée la moitiéde la surface du terrain, soit 121 m2. De ce fait, la forme de la maison éait quasiment déterminée par les facteurs suivants :

• Le plan de prévention des risques d'inondation rehausse les surfaces habitables au-dessus du niveau des crus de 1910 et 1955.
• La hauteur des constructions est limitée à proximité de la limite du fond de terrain.
• Un plafond urbain de 10 mètres.
• La contrainte d'être aligné avec le voisin en façade.

Dans ses rêves

Dans ses rêves le Maître d'Ouvrage se voit emménager à temps dans une maison presque finie et imagine que dans les 10 années à venir elle ne passera pas ses week-ends chez Leroy Merlin, Castorama, la Plateforme du Bâtiment, etc.....

In her dreams
In her dreams The Client sees herself moving in, on schedule, to a house that's as good as ready and does not foresee spending every weekend for the next 10 years wandering around B + Q, Homebase, Ikea, etc.....

The Skater

The Skater doesn’t trust The Architect. He thinks any other architect would do a better job. He’s worried about things not getting finished properly. Neither The Skater nor his mother The Client, has the ability to imagine a space that does not yet exist. They are at the complete mercy of the imagination of The Architect.

Despite being unable to visualize the inside of his future home, The Skater has a vision of himself living in an unfinished building site with wires and bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. He has heard stories from his mother of people (mostly architects) living for years in unfinished houses, climbing a ladder to use the toilet, having their clothes permanently covered in builders dust.

Architects, of course, can survive for years in conditions that most normal human beings would consider as being unacceptable. With their imagination, the bare walls are already clothed in vibrant streaming light, cascading down through the sculpted voids from a brilliant blue firmament. Scudding white clouds are half glimpsed through the skylight that they can’t quite afford yet.

Ideally The Skater would like a half-pipe in the garden and lots of plugs that work.

Le Skateur

Le Skateur ne fait pas confiance à L’Architecte. Il pense que n’importe quel autre architecte fera un meilleur travail. Il s’inquiète que cela ne va pas être fini correctement. Ni Le Skateur, ni sa mère (Le Maître d’Ouvrage) n’ont la capacité d’imaginer un espace qui n’existe pas encore. Ils sont à la merci de l’imagination de l’Architecte.

Malgré cette incapacité à visualiser l’intérieur de sa future demeure, Le Skateur s’imagine vivant dans un chantier avec fils et ampoules nues qui pendent au plafond. Sa mère lui a raconté des histoires de personnes (pour la plupart architectes) qui ont vécu des années dans des maisons inachevées, grimpant une échelle pour accéder aux toilettes, en permanence recouvertes d’une poussière de ciment.

Les architectes, bien sûr, peuvent rester longtemps dans un environnement considéré par d’autres êtres normaux comme complètement inacceptable. Dans leur imagination, le parpaing brut se drape déjà d’une lumière blanche céleste qui rebondit dans une composition de volumes harmonieux. Ils voient des petits nuages cotonneux à travers une verrière qui n’existe encore que sur un dessin.

Dans ses rêves, Le Skateur voit le jardin aménagé en ‘halfpipe’ et sa chambre équipée de prises qui fonctionnent.