Schist façade on a contemporary villa
A whole façade clad in schist strips, set against the white volumes of the rest of the house.
The house is all straight lines and white volumes. The owner's idea was to break that uniformity by giving texture to one of the volumes — the one that projects over the entrance — without altering its geometry.
We used schist in strips of varying thickness, laid in continuous horizontal courses. On a wall that long and uninterrupted, the risk is repetition: if the pieces go up in the order they come off the pallet, the eye starts to see the same pattern every metre. We worked from several pallets at once, mixing tones and thicknesses as we went up.
The junction alongside the horizontal window opening was the most demanding area. Every strip was cut to size so the line of the stone meets the frame with no visible gap and no trim on show.