Montreal-based architecture practice Jean Verville Architectes has created a sculptural wooden experience with cut-out forms in the interiors of a Montreal cottage in Canada.

Named MB House, the 140-square-metre space has playfully transformed an old house with a series of additions, subtractions and cut-out geometries made of wooden surfaces - converting the house from fluid promenade to pragmatic functionality.

The studio offered a rehabilitation of a Montreal cottage by orchestrating a sculptural experience with an architectural dimension. 

The richness, diversity and playfulness of the interiors are reflected outside and triggers curiosity.

Interfering in the daily life of a couple of young professionals, a system, both simple and complex, multiplies geometric interweavings and visual breakthroughs to reveal a home in the image of its owners. 

The interiors focus as much on compactness as on organizational interrelationships, said the studio. "The development of the architectural system requires its users to scrutinize their habits, and question the needs related to their daily life," said Jean Verville Architectes.

In this process of collaborative creation, the clients Benjamin Boller and Mathieu Denécheau adopted the playful approach of Studio Jean Verville architects with enthusiasm, humor, and sensitivity in order to specify the character identity of the project. 

The interiors play with positive and negative spaces, while the proposal articulates a crystallization fragmenting the volumetric entity by a physical and visual permeability, altering the perceptions of dimensioning. 

Opting for the subtraction of floor areas in favor of spatial qualities, volumes and interstices compose a domestic ecosystem of rows and vis-à-vis. 

Livened up by the constant variability of color shades, enlivened by the seasons and the natural light coming from the garden adjoining the living space, the MB project manifests the expression of these external parameters on its unifying monomateriality. 

Associated with its urban context and the flow of dynamic interactions generated by its internal conditions, including the movements of users and their way of living, a rhythmic versatility stands out in contrast to the geometric rigor of the assemblage.

According to the architects, beyond the amalgamation of domestic functions, MB House proposes a new kind of relationship, an intervention multiplying  interrelationships to enhance the movement through a parcours revealing its spatial polysemy. 

From archetype to abstraction, space is transformed. From an organizational matrix to a discovery game, MB presents a place participating in the active life of its neighborhood, while generating an enveloping family haunt.

Axonometric/exploded drawing

Project facts

Project name: MB

Year(s) of construction: 2019-22
Use: Residential
Area: 140 m2

Clients: Benjamin Boller, Mathieu Denécheau

Team studio Jean Verville architectes
Jean Verville, architect(lead architect)
Tania Paula Garza Rico, architect (studio director)
France Goneau (artistic advisor)

François Bodlet, architect
Rémi St-Pierre, architect
Samuel Landry, MA architecture
Camille Asselin, MA architecture
Jacob Éthier, MA architecture candidate

Bahia Burias, MA architecture candidate

Alexandre Meloche, MA architecture

Contractor: Le Pierre Rénovation

Cabinet maker CST inc.: Steeve Tousignant

All images © Maxime Brouillet

All drawings © Jean Verville Architectes

> via Jean Verville Architectes