This former 18th century Saint-Rémoise bastide, acquired by the Regional Natural Park of the Alpilles in 2007, is home to the administrative headquarters of the Regional Natural Park, it is also a place to raise awareness among the general public. La Maison du Parc consists of a renovated building, to which is added a contemporary-style wooden extension.

The main building (R + 2) is created as an extension of the 18th century building, following the principles of compactness and simplicity of volume. It takes the alignment and the template of the existing building for the benefit of outdoor spaces and gardens, visual continuity and enhancement of the heritage building.
A cantilever at the angle of the building opens the building to the south and west allowing a north-south visual continuity between the gardens and the inside / outside.
A skylight as an element of hook with the existing, allows to illuminate the vertical circulations of the 2 built entities and to organize all the circulations. It also makes it possible to create a night-time over-ventilation.
The use of a local wood, the Aleppo pine for the cladding of the extensions seeks dialogue and a fair confrontation between the old material and its minerality and the contemporary material: the treatment based on white tinted vegetable oil of the cleats wood (extensions) responds to limewash (building) in a search for kinship.

Sustainable development approach of the project owner

The Maison du Parc project was carried out within the framework of the BDM (Mediterranean Sustainable Buildings) “TERTIARY ENERGY BUILDING: Thermal Regulations for Low Consumption Renovation Building” concerning heating, cooling, ventilation, domestic hot water and lighting. The objective of this renovation was to create a new headquarters for the regional natural park within the old bourgeois house.

Architectural description

General description

The Maison du Parc naturel régional des Alpilles is made up of two entities:
- The old house of La Cloutière rehabilitated and enhanced, intended to accommodate exhibition and discussion spaces on the ground floor and on the first floor, as well as offices on the second floor.
- A contemporary-style extension to the west of the house which aims to welcome the public on the ground floor and install offices upstairs.

It was an old 18th century bourgeois house and its garden, resulting from a larger property of agricultural land, located outside and on the edge of the old ramparts of the city.
The house is organized in a classic way with a ground floor which was devoted to services, domestic functions, kitchen, laundry room but which also consists of craft premises, linked to the activities of the previous owner.
Before the renovation the house was in poor condition, most of the rooms have been restored.

This building is a testimony of the architecture of the end of the XVIIIth century and its evolution during the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth century. This building shows the adaptations to uses and the search for comfort of the owners with, for example, the creation of a summer lounge on the ground floor of the building.

The walls : Stone masonry with lime plaster, and limewash on the molding elements or stone decorations for the exterior.

Windows : The 19th century wooden double-leaf joinery has been replaced by two-leaf wooden windows from the Naudon Mathé frères brand. Single glazing has been replaced by double glazing.

The roof : The aspect of the original roof with its canal tiles, its chimneys, its zinc flashings and small stone terrace is preserved, with the recovery of certain current tiles in roof tiles.