Driven by an insatiable curiosity for art, a young Montreal couple has turned their house into a surprising playground where gigantic wooden cubes collide. The architect Jean Verville raised for him a structural puzzle which made it possible to give shape to a sculptural interior opening the door to a multitude of new experiences.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
One day in winter 2019, Mathieu Denécheau and Benjamin Boller arrived at the office of architect Jean Verville with a gift under their arm: a Lego model of their dream future home with him, an assembly of cubes within a cube. “A ball joint made it possible to see the interior. It was fabulous ! I started to cry,” he says.
For the renovation of their house in Plateau-Mont-Royal, the young couple let their passion for art take over the functional considerations of use. The interior with narrow rooms and rustic woodwork has turned into a living sculpture, a unique work of 1500 sq.ft.2 shaped by his fantasy.
This idea of artistic composition on an architectural scale was the driving force of the discussions.
Jean Verville, architect
Until obtaining five volumes of wood oscillating between child’s play and the performance of an artist. The word “sculpture” arose from the first exchanges between the architect and the owners in search of a new life experience. “I gradually discovered that they really wanted a radical object breaking domestic codes,” reports the man who guided their thinking, delighted with this audacity.
Monumental work
With the help of engineers, the architect imagined for them a trompe-l’oeil decor based on subtracting areas from the floor of the first floor. Partitions are also removed and replaced by side walls that can support a roof frame from which are suspended pieces “floating” in the void.
This subtraction and the accumulation of new elements give an assembly with a sculptural look as if we had taken a large block of solid wood and skilfully carved it to generate interstices.
Jean Verville, architect
Half-walls, walkways and railings thus contribute to the eye-catching visual division of the space. A covering in Quebec birch panels varnished in the factory to better stand the test of time accentuates the monumental impression that emerges from it.
The finish also brings a welcome warmth to a space with rigorous geometric shapes. Between openings and closings, solids and hollows, shadows and lights, this singular interior gives another relief to everyday life. “There is a beauty in the wandering of bodies in space, a lightness, almost like in a contemporary dance choreography”, marvels the architect.