Cure de Sembrancher
This 18th-century presbytery in the heart of the village of Sembrancher houses different functions across its floors. This unremarkable fact testifies to the need to reclaim built heritage in order to adapt it to the new needs that arise over time, including the change of a building's programme. Thus its first floor, which long housed offices, is to become a dwelling again — but this time attentive to the complexities of contemporary living. The floor is therefore divided between a large 2.5-room apartment and a studio.
The operation consists above all of identifying and preserving the building's particularities while offering a dwelling of unique quality through its setting. The apartment therefore draws on the fluidity of the spaces and the paring-down of materials to bring a delicate intervention while giving it a contemporary character. The typology favours this convenience by allowing the reclaiming and revaluing of the enfilades. In this way it manages to eliminate any purely circulatory space through the use of inhabited corridors. The dwelling thus becomes a spatial composition, a domestic promenade that optimises the use of the available area.
The simplicity of the materiality chosen for this project creates a form of abstraction of the architectural elements that allows the unique features of an 18th-century building to be highlighted. To achieve this effect, every detail becomes essential. The walls are stripped of ennobling materials, the doors no longer assert themselves as such. The entire intervention is carried out so as to give way to the woodwork, stones and vaults as the main actors of the domestic scene.
This renunciation of a material expression also allows the project to extend over time, through the opportunity it gives the individual to appropriate it easily. Moreover, the project is mindful of its long-term impact in a building that has proven itself in the past. This is why all the partitions are lightweight, simplifying their removal in a future rehabilitation.
Finally, the presbytery becomes an opportunity to revitalise the village by restoring a function similar to its original one. It can be re-inhabited by the residents of Sembrancher, who see in it the chance to reclaim their heritage. The new apartments thus make it possible to elevate everyday life in the centre of a traditional Valais village.