There is not a single right angle in this heater. The heater core is a rounded volume capped with a dome, the bench leaves its foot in a continuous undulation that runs along the floor to the wall, and the edges that remain are softened to the radius of a hand.
This choice has a direct consequence on site: nothing is prefabricated. Each curve is built in small pieces, then worked over with render in several coats, by hand and with a sponge, until a continuous surface without visible edge or joint is obtained.
The contrast is deliberate: the cleaning doors and the convection grilles have been kept strictly rectangular. They are the only straight lines in the heater, and they serve as reference points in a composition that offers no others.
On the rear face, the flue column rises towards the chimney stack, and two niches are hollowed into the thickness of the masonry. They are not decorative: in a masonry heater, the useful thickness often exceeds what the thermal design requires, and storage can be taken from it — warm storage, which suits kindling.
Delivered in November 2016, in an old house with beams and stone walls.
Sainte-Alvère, in the Dordogne — a commune now merged into Val de Louyre et Caudeau.
