Jean-Pierre Raynaud’s studio
Barbizon, France
JEAN-PIERRE RAYNAUD
Architect: WILMOTTE & ASSOCIES
Landscaper: NEVEUX & ROUYER
325 sqm (studio)
5000 sqm (landscape)
2009
Rehabilitation and extension of Jean-Pierre Reynaud's studio.
The artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud fell under the spell of the "Clos d'Hortense", a building on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest. He suggested to Jean-Michel Wilmotte that the house be enlarged and given a modern touch.
The restructuring project seeks a compositional balance between the transformation and reuse of the building, a harmony between the opening of the interior space onto the garden and the composition of this landscape which is inserted into the national forest. Unsightly additions have disappeared and a glass roof has appeared, giving volume to the main building. In this drawer open to nature, the works of art take their place, they confront this new space, they live in it and settle on the floor of the studio in a palpable serenity. The glazed windows and their profile open up the existing wall on the exact line of the roof edge and its central gable.
A set of outdoor terraces covering more than 500 sqm forms a pure base on which the elements of the project are placed: the workshop, a monumental sculpture of the “pot”, gilded with fine gold, a small Scandinavian pavilion, a century-old relic of a world exhibition, bought back and then reassembled on the site years ago.
This project cements the complicity and trust between an artist and an architect.
Jean-Michel Wilmotte
architect
The transparency of the glass, the plant volumes under the canopy, the black panels, the gold, each element takes its own place and blends with pleasure in this surprise on the edge of the wood, as a tribute to the poetic power of the place, to the painters and naturalists of Barbizon.
