BAL splits a French seaside house into three terracotta-clad volumes

A house on France's Atlantic coast has been divided into three interconnected structures, and the split conceals its true size: 300 sq m and six bedrooms on a rhomboid plot of just 500 sq m, 200 m from the ocean in Lacanau Océan.

Bordeaux-based studio BAL designed the compound, known as House in Lacanau Océan, on a sloping site where the three volumes sit at angles to one another. The arrangement produces gaps, vistas and slices of garden, while the buildings themselves supply weather shielding, privacy and carefully framed sea views.

How does the three-part plan work?

The structures connect at basement level, with a second link at ground floor beside the entrance. That basement operates as the project's hidden core. The building closest to the road holds a games room and home cinema, joined by tunnels to two basement bunkrooms in the adjoining structure and to a hammam, surf workshop and cellar in the third.

At ground level, the main living and dining space sits above the games room and connects to another sleeping level. Across a terracotta-paved upper terrace, the furthest structure contains a double-height living space. Sliding glass doors in both buildings can fully open the rooms to the exterior, turning the terrace into an open-air living room. A staircase in the double-height space drops directly to the basement through a planted courtyard.

The site also accommodates a pool, a playhouse, cycle storage, off-street parking and a planting scheme built on local species.

What materials tie the hamlet together?

The architects commissioned 30,000 locally made terracotta tiles, colour-coded to match the garden's sandy soil. The tiles run inside and out in a herringbone pattern, unifying the surfaces, and the whole ensemble rests on a sculpted terracotta plinth. A cascade of terracotta-clad steps leads down to the pool.

Each volume shares a near-identical form, clad in angle-cut Douglas fir that echoes the tiling. BAL cites the region's historic tobacco-drying sheds as the precedent for the project's quasi-industrial vernacular.

What does the sustainability spec include?

The envelope relies on lime-hemp and plant-based wool insulation. The concrete is low-carbon certified, and rainwater is collected for reuse. Every room has solar shading and air circulators. The first structure carries an additional floor with two further bedrooms.

Despite the region's high summer temperatures and strong winds, BAL designed the house for year-round comfort — one comparison worth holding onto: a compound fully permeable enough to soak up the sound of the ocean, yet sealed against coastal weather.

Who is BAL?

Thomas Sabatier, Thomas Cestia and Jeanne Mauvezin founded the studio — Bureau des Architectures Libres — in Bordeaux in 2015. All three trained at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles and worked for firms around Paris and Bordeaux before uniting on their first project, the refurbishment of the Hôtel Splendid in Dax. The name signals a commitment to design freedom and, in the studio's words, a 'love of beautiful things, a taste for bespoke environments and unique projects, whatever the scale, from the tiniest coloured chamfer on a stair tread to the major refurbishment of a listed building'.

Lacanau Océan shows that credo at domestic scale: a non-linear solution, a bespoke tile run, and a basement tunnel network that turns a family house into a small, self-contained world.