Architecture as Aesthetics: Fobe House

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Fobe House

A Belgian film director resides in one of the four white boxy structures of this residence near Marrakech by Guilhem Eustache.

Alongside the main home, the Fobe House also comprises a pool house, a caretaker’s residence and a garage, which are dotted around the two-hectare site.

Two overlapping concrete walls screen the front of the house itself, while a concealed staircase between leads up to a terrace on the roof.

Patterned openings pierce these walls, as well as others around the house to create lattice-like shadows on the interior walls and floors.

The opposite side of the house opens out to the swimming pool and faces across to a stepped diving board and the pool house behind.

The project was completed in 2007.

see projects there by Zaha Hadid and Foster + Partners by clicking here.

The text below is from Guilhem Eustache:

The land is located about ten kilometers south of Marrakech.

Flat, mostly drowned under a heat veil that hides horizon.

It is only from December to March that the snowy atlas appears.

In this 2.5 hectares area the buildings occupy only 240 sqm.

The volumes and their arrangements permit to avoid a floating effect in this empty space.

Before discovering the layout we first need to go along the clay walls, which remote the neighbours away while allowing the sight of whites geometries.

Once we cross through the metal gate, earth tinted, we are suddenly plunged into a strange world.

Three white steles frame and seek the longitudinal axis of the house in the center of the field.

On the right side, the Guard house, two mixed cubes, is close to a totem fireplace and faces the double garage all in length studded with small openings.

These simple elements articulate the vacuum around and focus the eye towards the house itself.

Paradoxically simple and complex: a foliation of longitudinals sails between which stages the project program; tall windows; sets of geometric cutouts; framing, especially from the living room across the pool and its bleachers toward the atlas.