In the frame

This new house by Jakob + Macfarlane sprouts from a site in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne-billancourt. ‘It’s in a neighbourhood with several avantgarde houses built in the 1920s and 1930s by the likes of Le Corbusier and Malletstevens,’ says Brendan Macfarlane, who started Jakob + Macfarlane with Dominique Jakob in 1997. The house reflects the shimmering white walls of its iconic precursors but takes a different structural direction. Rising like a fractured ovoid, its edges are defined by a branching tubular steel frame set over an internal steel-panelled skin. Five terraces are scattered throughout, while inside there are not one but two aquariums incorporated into the stair tower.