"This house makes the most of its sloping panoramic plot, it floats in the trees, suspended above the ground on concrete stilts."

In any new build project one of the most important aspects is the building plot. The landscape of the Languedoc and Provence benefits from stunning landscapes and plenty of opportunity for sloping or elevated interesting plots of building land. If you can find a good one, the results can be spectacular.

This new build villa project near Lamalou Les Bains in the languedoc was a great opportunity to prove the point. The plot was on a small hillside facing west and covered in trees. This client had drawn the design for his dream villa on the back of a paper serviette on a long haul flight. Our job was to extract a design version of it and get the best out of the location and the concept.

Sloping plots are technically difficult sites

To level or not to level - that is the question. It’s easy in construction to be tempted to level everything, but this was conventional and not desirable. In this case, we did not want to excavate a level on the site because the design concept was to place the building as carefully as possible in the trees. We wanted it to look like the building had grown out of the woods.

The house sits on on a concrete build platform, elevated over the landscape on concrete columns. The foundation for each column is excavated directly into the bedrock below. This reduced the excavation costs and gave us easy access for plumbing and serviced from below, while elevating the living floor to the height of the adjacent trees. An apartment space was created below.

The aim was to protect as many trees and plants as possible to give the impression of the building growing out of the woods. Trees less than 1m away were left un damaged. From inside the salon, the feeling is of ‘floating’ in the tree canopy. It’s both zen-like and utterly mesmerising.

Practical design insights:

• Suspended build platform elevates the living floor into the trees

• Building is extruded from the woods

• Terraces on every level gives 360° views

• Top floor terrace has particularly spectacular views

• Elevated concrete pool

The final design included several terraces, a mezzanine and an elevated pool was added afterwards. It's a fabulous house. From the salon you really are floating in the canopy of the trees.

"This house makes the most of its sloping panoramic plot, it floats in the trees, suspended above the ground on concrete stilts."