The House That Shade Designed

On a three hectare enclosed estate at the gates of Aix-en-Provence, this architect designed villa unfolds its white rendered cubic volumes beneath a sky that never catches it off guard. The openings do not seek to fling wide: they frame the landscape, composed like a drawing rather than a breach. Terraces and roof overhangs place shade exactly where the sun strikes hardest, and thick walls hold the coolness of the rooms without any air conditioning stepping in.

Nine rooms, six bedrooms, nine hundred square meters: the scale here is not a figure to recite, it is the certainty of never crowding one another. The reception rooms align in a row of three opening due south onto the main terrace, and the infinity pool stays sun drenched until evening. The garden, planted with cacti and agaves in open ground, needs no watering in summer: the entire house was conceived to ask nothing of the hot season.