Architect-designed house

We owe the invention of modern architecture to the post-war Case Study Houses experiments in American residential housing. This revolutionary reconstruction led to the construction of 36 prototypes functional designer houses. The avant-garde architects involved in the programme included Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen.

In France, each period has produced its own generation of leading architects. Le Corbusier in Marseille and Auguste Perret in Le Havre are obvious examples, but there are many other architects and architectural practices that have developed our property landscape. Each had their own ideas about updating the way we build, occupy, furnish and live in our homes. In the 1960s, architect Jacques Couëlle built five ‘landscape houses’ near Cannes; houses whose free-form design maintained the essential link with the world outside. The result was a unique marriage between sculpture and architecture. The Salier-Courtois-Lajus-Sadirac collective imported the functionalist architecture of the Bauhaus to the west coast of France in the area around Arcachon. More recently, Jacques Moussafir has completely redesigned and reconstructed a Parisian house that was previously falling down.

So why buy an architect-designed home?

Architects certainly have a way of looking at how we live and the places we live in as the basis for simplifying the design process. For some, the perspective will be one of overcoming topographical constraints, for others, it could be finding new materials and experimenting with them to reconsider our environmental footprint. The expert eye of an architect is usually a guarantee that the finished house will be aesthetically appealing, but it also makes it possible to optimise interior spaces, control natural daylight and ensure a comfortable flow between rooms.
And because they generally use high-quality natural materials and incorporate the latest innovations in energy efficiency, architect-designed homes often prove to be excellent property investments.