Housing on the Rocks

Located on the edge of the village of Veyrier, at the foot of the Salève and overlooking the Geneva basin, the project is set within a territory where landscape, heritage and housing meet. At the boundary between the historic core and more recent extensions, it takes on a transitional role and proposes a measured densification, based on the idea of densifying through voids. As the historic headquarters of the family company, the existing family house is preserved and restored in its original volume; it becomes the lynchpin of a composition that reintroduces a structuring central courtyard. Around it, two new volumes inspired by traditional barns create a contemporary hamlet, respectful of village scales and silhouettes.
The project draws from the codes of rural architecture to propose a contemporary interpretation: pitched roofs, pronounced gables, openings freely defined by use, and wooden walkways. On the courtyard side, a structured material palette of stone elements extends the rural history of the site; on the garden side, the forms soften and open toward the orchard and the wider landscape, preserving the existing grove and its century-old sequoia. Between memory and transformation, the intervention weaves a subtle dialogue between built form and vegetation, old and new, and outlines a vision of collective housing as a “large shared house,” rooted in its territory.