A Club for the Village

The Club Absinthe is a project to transform an 18th-century village building in the heart of Val-de-Travers. Once a prohibited absinthe distillery, its walls have served multiple functions throughout the ages; pharmacy, offices, mechanical workshops, housing, among others. The transformation project is motivated by the owner's desire to create a meeting place for his fellow citizens, the covassons.
The existing building is a collection of numerous interventions, a long series of transformations, extensions, and revisions. Almost everything is already there. The project proceeds with light interventions: accepting, revealing, reinventing the functions of certain obsolete parts, adding or removing only what is necessary. An acupunctural approach, where defining what will not be touched becomes crucial.

Moving away from a romanticised view of the village, our interpretation of the location focuses on the strong rationality of rural construction. The existing is characterised by a fascinating pragmatism: construction must respond to constantly evolving uses, it is seen as a tool to work with, as material to be adapted according to needs, in a simple and direct manner. We approach each element pragmatically: thus the old overhead beams remain above the new stove, the new hood is attached to it, and the existing pipes running through the rooms remain visible, either painted or simply cleaned. Nothing is hidden; each object, each assembly, expresses its function and is witness to the rationality of construction.

A close collaboration with the craftsmen is established, generating numerous iterations, back and forth, adaptations, developing an openness and agility of conception. The construction becomes a large prototype, where every detail is drawn, discussed, tested, and adapted. As this iterative work progresses, a precision appears; resulting in a simplification of assemblies, a reduction of necessary material. A sheet under tension becomes an entrance canopy, a faucet is reduced to a curved copper tube, a socle to a line of paint.