Wood-Concrete House
Wood-Concrete House
mano
ARCHITECTS
Mano
ARCHITECTURE OFFICES
Alessandra Merli
YEAR
2025
LOCATION
Aubervilliers, France
CATEGORY
Houses
Text description provided by architect.
This project transforms a modest 1930s suburban house into a generous and light-filled dwelling. Located in a narrow plot within a discontinuous urban fabric, the new structure reinterprets the typology of the detached pavilion, extending vertically while preserving the urban scale and rhythm of the street.
Behind a discrete street façade, the house opens up into a spacious three-story volume, entirely rebuilt with a timber frame structure anchored to the existing masonry.
The wooden façade on the garden side creates a strong dialogue with the lush exterior and reveals the house's structural clarity.
Inside, two open-plan levels offer full visual continuity from the street to the garden, emphasizing transparency, spatial contrast, and material sincerity.
The interplay between wood and raw concrete structures the domestic experience. Daylight flows through large-scale windows, animating a sequence of volumes that blur the boundaries between interior and exterior.
The architectural language avoids formal gestures, favoring a calm articulation of material, light, and function.
The project is part of MANO's ongoing exploration of participatory and contextual design.
As both an architectural agency and a design-research practice, MANO aims to respond to complex spatial and social situations with architectural clarity and constructive intelligence.
