The small houses They are no longer a problem when decorating, well, not so much a problem. In the hug of the Corsa Mountains, 620 meters of altitude, to the south of cut and north of Ajaccio, the old town of Muracciole does not have more than thirty inhabitants throughout the year. Here, in an old stone building of the nineteenth century, typical of this part of Corsica, where the thick granite walls are erected as bastions against the ravages of time, the architect Charlotte Carrasco undertook the renewal of an apartment in the town of Muracciole.
The renewal of a small house of 39 m² composed of two bedrooms, one in the original house and another in a lateral concrete extension built about thirty years ago. “The place was in an advanced state of deterioration, after having been abandoned for many years. The first stage consisted of simplifying and rationalizing the distribution by eliminating superfluous elements. ” The architect will reveal the existing volumes and the hidden functions of the modest square meters reasignanting the rooms. Thinking in terms of volume rather than surface, he created an open space of 28 m² for the living area and a night space with an independent bedroom – a desire of the owner – in the place of the old kitchen, leaving the bathroom where it was.
A sensory approach
Remembering your childhood in old small houses of people full of heat, coexistence and intimacy, with memories of dark tones, smell of wood and wood soils that creak; Charlotte Carrasco launched the walls to discover the granite stone and thus «rediscover the essence of the building, of the town, so that the soul of the house breathes again.» Highlighting the subtle nuances of each stone as a sculpted palette, the roughness of the granite now exposed becomes for the architect into «a textured canvas on which the light dances and writes shadows.» He accompanied this operation with a renewal of carpentry, doors, windows, framework, beams and structural soil, using the sand jet to reveal the natural patina of the chestnut and oak. The parts of the soil that must be changed are replaced by wood from no more than 25 kilometers away: here everything is restoration, pickled and reuse. The countertop is from Castaño, the doors and oak shelves, all worked by artisans from the surrounding villages.