Gardeners House

The project stems from a reflection on the role that the new gardeners’ house can establish with the green public spaces surrounding it, articulating a composite figure that accommodates both architecture and landscape. Located on a site once occupied by a forest, partially cut down over time and still present to the north of the site, the project proposes a new public space with a landscaping purpose — a clearing surrounded by trees that articulates and punctuates a shift in the path connecting the forest to the new residential neighborhood and the existing suburban fabric. The volume is first and foremost a complement to this vegetal circle, with its curved facade that completes it and incorporates a public fountain. This gesture is reinforced by the emergence of a lantern, which addresses passers-by and enhances the civic character of the whole.

The scale and composition of the facades suggest that this is the last house in the villa neighborhood, marking a transition of scale towards the new collective housing volumes. Its uniqueness lies in the inversion of the conventional order of construction — a delicate bent wood facade, stained in blue, extends the sky down to the base of the clearing and gives the volume a lightness reminiscent of certain playful garden architectures. It covers a more robust frame of load-bearing walls made of terracotta bricks, which, with their hygrometric properties and robustness, are particularly suited for the interior uses. Beneath these walls lies a beam structure, resembling a pergola, which filters the zenithal light that illuminates the four-room plan throughout its depth. At the center, the transitional space between clean and dirty areas, a particular moment of daily use, is lit by the lantern emerging outside, signaling the presence of the gardeners on-site.

Client: Commune de Thônex, SIG, Etat de Genève; Location: Thônex, GE; Year: 2019–2023; Amo: Comptoir Immobilier; Team: Fanny Noël, Diogo Lopes, Camilla Sala, Antonin Mack, Fabio Patricio; Photos: Sven Högger