Modern design elements in your property in France

Incorporate the Modern

Adding a Modern Aspect to your Property

I have to come clean here. Despite renovating old buildings more or less continuously for the last four years, and creating this website about the best way to renovate old buildings, I am also an enthusiast of a great deal of modern architecture.

In brochures and magazines you will have seen lots of buildings that are old and traditional on the outside, yet have soaring spaces, steel staircases, halogen lighting on the inside. The contrast with the exterior adds to the surprise when you enter such a property.

Yet the problem is always how to incorporate the two. We have not gone resolutely modern in our own barn conversion, but have incorporated some modern touches.

 

This is not a very good picture, but it attempts to show two things:

• the modern wood and steel balcony continues the 'parallel lines' theme of the ancient roof beams, while being modern in feel and appearance. You could do the same thing but all in shining steel, which would look even better.
• the addition of some modern pictures can transform the feel of the interior (how many modern art galleries have old worn stone or brick walls?) Large Rothko or Jackson Pollock paintings would also work very well.

 

Similarly, in the kitchen, instead of choosing wooden units a complete semi-industrial stainless steel kitchen and steel appliances would work very well.

We have friends nearby who have suspended plasterboard between the roof-beams in the lounge, so that there is a small space between the sharp straight lines of the plasterboard and the rough hewn edges of the beams. With halogen lights then inset in the plasterboard, this is a very impressive 'modern meets traditional' approach.

So the message is, don't be nervous about incorporating some modern elements in your building. Just because a building is old doesn't mean everything in it also needs to be old or old looking. In fact modern things gain a new lease of life with a rustic stone wall behind them

 

Indoors / Outdoors

Incorporating the outdoors and indoors of a traditional French building goes completely against tradition. The traditional house has small windows to keep the heat out (or in, in winter). There are shutters on all the windows, and the inside is quite dark.

But nowadays, when we like lots of light inside the property, this is not always the best choice. If you have a good view, you probably want to see it from inside the house, so that it can be admired even in winter.

You may also want an outdoor terrace to feel like part of the house, so you can move between the two easily.

The solution is to have large patio doors, with as much glass as possible, between the two areas.

Here I have to recommend a book. It is a superb book, but I think is only available in French. No matter, the pictures alone are worth the price, if you don't read French. The book is 'Habiter l'architecture' by Maurice Sauzet.

The book also considers how to make the best use of space inside and outside, how to establish natural pathways through the house that lead to the highlight (e.g. the terrace and view), how best to arrange planting around the property, ways to screen the private areas of the property from the public parts such as the driveway and so on.

Along the way you will see houses start as completely unremarkable little houses and end up as masterpieces. I cannot recommend too strongly that you track down this book if you are interested in how best to approach your renovation from a modern angle. And for the record,  I have no financial interest in whether you buy the book, and I don't know the author!