L’Écurie du Rajol extends a family holiday home set in the hills of the Gard department in France. The project began with a simple brief: to create a small stable for the family’s ponies during their stays, on a site as beautiful as it is complex ; narrow, irregular and marked by a steep gradient.
Here, the topography is not treated as a constraint: it shapes the project. The different spaces settle into the slope across a succession of levels, between stone walls and gardens. This terraced arrangement allows the stable to find its place naturally within the site, almost as though it were a series of terraces already embedded in the landscape.
Along the road, the architecture remains deliberately discreet and enclosed, preserving the privacy of the property. Towards the interior, by contrast, it opens generously onto the house, the equestrian spaces and the surrounding landscape. At the heart of the composition, the winter garden forms the project’s main living space: a place to gather, entertain or simply enjoy being close to the ponies throughout the year. Its large glazed openings extend the view towards the stable and frame, to the south, an open outlook over the valley and vineyards.
Four boxes, a grooming area, a tack room and storage spaces are arranged around this inhabited heart. Within the limited space available between the buildings, a small arena-paddock also finds its place, conceived as a landscaped space in its own right.
Local stone, timber and glass define a contemporary architecture, punctuated by dark grey metal frames and roofing. The lines are deliberately simple, the volumes low and the roof overhangs generous. Without seeking to reproduce the traditional architecture of the Gard, the project draws upon some of its materials and proportions, and above all upon its distinctive way of anchoring itself into the slope.
L’Écurie du Rajol is therefore less an object placed within the landscape than an architecture shaped by it; a project in which every constraint contributes to the design and where, behind a carefully considered composition, there remains a deliberate sense of simplicity.
