On a rectangular plot of land on the banks of a river, we are to work out a compact house: a prismatic volume determined by the limits of the urban planning regulations that we will willingly accept and exhaust. We start looking for a strategy, we need a new path to accompany us in the creative process. And we found it on the way: we will build a passageway that crosses the land along its length in the direction of the river and organises all the pieces of the functional programme around it until it gets lost in the water.

Like a lightning bolt flashing above a tree, the passageway breaks up the compact initial piece, leaving in its wake a simple and equivalent duality of volumes around which the functions are grouped, with the social spaces on one side and the more intimate ones on the other. From this point onwards, the repetition, grouping or subtraction of a single rectangular module chosen for the occasion takes charge of designing and drawing this house with precision. The defined module organises the composition of the façade, designs the furnishings or patterns the joinings that connect the passageway with the house, from the street to the swimming pool.

Today, the “Passageway house” already belongs to its neighbourhood. It is happy to contemplate the bell tower of the village and the surrounding hills, it listens to the eternal murmur of the water flowing down the river and, as if it were not enough, some people say that it is poking its little eye in the house next door.