THE HOUSE THAT FELL INTO THE SEA
Harvard GSD * 2023
Harvard GSD * 2023
SITE: KORBOUS, TUNISIA
INDIVIDUAL PROJECT
ADVISED BY ÉRIC LAPIERRE
This project reimagines Le Corbusier’s Maison Baizeau through the text description of the grandchildren of the house’s owners. The first ones to describe the house as “The House that Fell into the Water” were the children and the proposed house is the embodiment of this imaginary – where the house is falling and merging into the landscape and where the house becomes multivalent, holding multiple qualities and interpretations.
The original Villa Baizeau sits along the east edge of the Gulf of Tunis and the proposal sits directly across the gulf, in a town called Korbous. The project is sited along a small peninsula in Korbous named Crique Mille Fieulle and is characterized by windswept sandstone hills and layered rock formations.
The house is reached by a curved gravel road and steps down the cliff like an amphitheater, a place to view the landscape while drawing its form from the contours of the ground. At its most essential, the project is a big stair – a stair that leads to the sea and holds a house along the way. The entire house is a covered walkway. The house sits on concrete piers to create a sense of precarity of a house falling as well as being able to adjust itself to the seismic activity of the Korbous landscape. The house is lifted, but only slightly. It follows the ground closely, creating a tenuous gap between the natural ground and built floor. This gap allows cool air to flow underneath, which could be appreciated in the hot Tunis summer.
The house steps into three levels, echoing the three levels of Villa Baizeau. The roof becomes a terrace, the land becomes a room, the house is a stair. Mirroring the programmatic sequence of Villa Baizeau, at the first floor are the garden and bedrooms where you experience the stepping at a private, intimate scale with light cannons on the roof imbuing the room with a specific color and atmosphere. At the second level, the garden, kitchen, dining, and living room are stepped in unison, creating an unobstructed, cascading view into the sea. And at the third level, the garden and a single bedroom becomes an outlook, where past this point, you are left only with the sea and landscape.
The House that Fell into the Sea is a copy of the Baizeau House, based on its description. It explores the idea of multivalency – where the stair is a terrace, a landing is a room, the roof is the landscape, and the stair is the house.