Villa MR: An Alpine Renovation by Atelier Archiplein

Annecy sits at the northern tip of its lake, in the French Alps. The hillside villages around it are full of mid-century villas that were built quickly, lived in for decades, and now need renovation. Most of them get gutted and refinished. Villa MR, renovated by Atelier Archiplein, takes a different approach. The architects exposed the structure that the original builders hid, and built a new ground-floor extension that reframes the entire house toward the mountains and the lake.

The result is a villa that looks modest from the street and dramatic from the garden. The pitched roof and rendered walls remain. But inside, exposed concrete columns, terrazzo floors, sage green joinery, and a house-shaped fireplace volume turn a conventional Alpine house into something specific and precise.

The Garden Facade and the Extension

The most visible change is the ground-floor extension on the garden side. A new volume in white brick with large timber-framed windows pushes the living space toward the view. Above it, a green retractable awning and a curved metal balcony mark the upper floor. The original pitched roof and rendered gable sit unchanged above the new work.

This layering is deliberate. The extension does not pretend to be original. The white brick is different from the render. The timber frames are larger than the old windows. The new and old read as distinct layers, which is what makes the composition work. Imitation would look wrong. Contrast looks honest.

Exposed Concrete: The Hidden Structure Revealed

Inside, the renovation strips back the finishes to reveal the villa's concrete frame. Columns and beams that were plastered over for decades now stand raw: grey, textured, and structural. The living room is organised around these columns. They frame views, divide zones, and give the open plan a rhythm that furniture alone cannot provide.

The centrepiece is a house-shaped concrete volume that contains the wood stove. It reads as a building within a building: a miniature gable form, raw concrete, standing in the middle of the terrazzo floor. It is the kind of gesture that could feel gimmicky but works here because the material is honest. It is not a decorative shape. It is a chimney that happens to look like a house.

The Kitchen: Sage Green and Mountain Light

The kitchen runs along the garden side in sage green cabinetry with a terrazzo countertop. A full-width window above the counter frames the garden, the neighbouring roofs, and the mountains beyond. The colour is carefully chosen: green enough to register as a decision, muted enough to recede against the concrete columns and the view.

The long timber dining table with red chairs sits between the kitchen and the living room, framed by the concrete columns. The red is the only warm accent in a palette of grey, white, green, and oak. It pulls the room together without dominating it.

Joinery and Detail

The joinery throughout is oak with chevron veneer patterns and diamond-shaped timber handles. These are custom pieces, clearly designed for this house. The children's room has sage green built-in cabinetry with a timber bench and a square interior window that borrows light from the corridor.

These details matter because they signal the difference between a renovation and a refurbishment. A refurbishment updates finishes. A renovation redesigns how the house works. The joinery here is not applied. It is integrated into the spatial logic of each room.

Chromatic Strategy: Green, Yellow, Oak

The colour palette references the villa's mid-century origins. Green appears in the kitchen, the children's room, the awning, and the gutter brackets. Yellow appears on the exposed rafter ends and inside the eaves. Oak runs through the window frames, doors, and furniture. These are not nostalgic choices. They are chromatic codes reintroduced in a contemporary register.

The exterior details reward close looking. The white brick base uses a sawtooth course at the window sills. The rafter ends are painted yellow. The gutter brackets are green. Each detail is small, but together they give the house a personality that most renovations strip away.

Drawings

The exploded axonometric shows the new walls inserted within the existing villa envelope. The extension reads as a distinct layer added to the garden side. The floor plan shows how the open-plan ground floor organises kitchen, living, dining, bedroom, and stair around the exposed concrete columns.

Why This Project Matters

Alpine villa renovation is a growing field as mid-century housing stock ages across France, Switzerland, and Austria. Most renovations default to either full preservation or full gutting. Villa MR demonstrates a third option: expose what is structurally interesting, extend where the view demands it, and use colour and material to bridge old and new.

If you are renovating a mid-century house in a mountain setting, this project is worth studying for how it handles the dialogue between structure and finish, how it uses colour as a design tool rather than a decorative afterthought, and how a modest extension can completely reframe a house toward its landscape.

About the Studio

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Project credits: Villa MR by Atelier Archiplein. Annecy, France. Photographs: Aurelien Poulat.