Stone house in Lyon, France | Perraudin architecture

Lyon based studio Perraudin architecture designed this family house in Croix Rousse in Lyon, France made entirely out of solid stone.


Limestone has been chosen for the massive stone walls that also form the main structural, load bearing system of the building, taking also advantage of the material’s natural qualities, such as thermal mass, absorption of humidity and durability. The result is a minimalist, timeless and sustainable architectural piece.

All images © Courtesy of Perraudin architecture



Description from Perraudin Architecture:

Massive stone house, Lyon - Croix Rousse, France

This single family house finds itself in the hearth of Croix-Rousse, one of the densest neighbourhoods of Europe. The quarter is heavily marked by its thousands of former home-workshops of the "canuts" - the silk weavers of the 19th century Lyonnais silk manufacturing.

An urban tissue of high, massive stone buildings with large window openings carrying heavy oak floor structures that allow for the high open spaces needed for the Jacquard looms that were used for weaving the silk tissue.

Located in a hearth of a housing block at the back of the art gallery it extends, the possibilities to build are strictly limited by complex urban regulations. Therefore, the envelope of the house follows exactly the authorised maximum volume, with its spaces 'carved out' of this given envelope.

Within this rigid shell, the spaces are positioned one after the other forming a continuous scenic route. Due to the limited depth of the maximum envelope, the layout is organised as alternating service and served spaces, with the service-spaces (bathroom, storage, stairs, toilets…) forming massive blocks of stone that support the roof. With its reinforced contrast between mass and emptiness, between lightness and darkness, with its pierced and recessing mass, the playful and liberated inner world contrasts strongly with the outer world blocked in regulation.


Being closer to physical geography than to architecture, the service blocks arrange themselves in a route connecting and separating one living space from another. As stone is a subtractive rather than additive material, the "domestic landscape architecture" has a vocabulary of rifts, carvings, cracks and recesses.

The service blocks define by contrast the living voids, orienting them towards the small garden they surround. The freshness generated by the basin completes this architectural geography.

Structurally, all floors are supported by the service blocks, with each block uniquely built up out of massive - structural - stone. The large blocks of dimension stone making up its masonry have been sculpted and assembled block by block after being cut precisely in the quarry. Delivered element by element, they were quickly mounted as if it were blocks in a toy building game.














Source: Dezeen | Perraudin architecture