French architects JKA and design studio FUGA have converted a nineteenth century Alpine farmhouse in France into a holiday villa with chunky wooden cladding and cut-outs based on the shadows of other buildings.To recreate the rhythms and patterns of the traditional local buildings, JKA and FUGA used one-inch-thick roughly sawn spruce planks, which they had to source over a year in advance. ”Only a few trunks presented enough nodes and few clapboards big enough were able to be pulled from each trunk. In typical Alpine barns the gaps between disjointed wooden planks would allow air to circulate round drying hay, but at Villa Solaire the gaps between each panel simply let extra light into the rooms inside.The architects studied the shadows cast onto the villa by neighbouring buildings to determine the positions of the cut-out patterns. “The pattern within the cladding is designed to respond to the path described by these shadows. The areas receiving a greater amount of sun are all the more open,” Koempgen said.Originally they planned to cut the wood digitally before installation, but instead found it easier and more economical to attach the boards to the building frame first, then stencil on the patterns and employ a local carpenter to cut them by hand. “The construction marks slowly disappear but the cladding keeps the valor and traces of the handmade work,” Koempgen explained.The framework of the original farmhouse was restored, which the architects describe as an unusual practice. “A lot of operations on old farmhouses used to cut out the wood structure of the first level and replace it with concrete structures. In our case, the existing skeleton was integrally conserved,” added Koempgen.Inside the two-story house, a ground floor wading pool is surrounded with recycled slate tiles that were originally used to cover the roof.Bedroom suites and a kitchen are located on the first floor and are positioned at each of the corners, leaving a cross-shaped living room between with windows on all four walls.