Home Remodelling: Antti Lovag’s spectacular bubble house renovated by Odile Decq

Imagine a bright red home that appears to be made of interconnecting bubbles of space where a house was built while being transformed along the way, evolving, and that continues to develop with room layouts and the rhythm of windows and openings planned first, covered with a layer of concrete. Doesn't it sound absolutely magical?

The brainchild of Hungarian architect Antti Lovag, the bubble house is truly exceptional; an imaginative work built in the 1970s is based on the concept and adoption of his ideas about organic architecture – or "habitlogy". Designed for his patron, industrialist Pierre Bernard the design is a perfect example of unique architecture, singularity, responses to the local land and climate conditions.

Invited to carry out the renovation by Bernard's children, Decq started the bubble House project to entice people back to nature, with new interior and exterior furnishings inscribed in the old design to formulate the structure.

After spending a year and half getting to know the Bernards and the house the concept of 'too much is never enough' became the prime motive of the restoration with vibrant bright colours extremely enthused in the new design. Before making any changes Decq worked closely with Isabelle Bernard to create a new colour scheme, a bright red exterior with bulging round and oval windows and skylights along with opting new ideas for diverse sections of the house, crafting an equally brightly coloured interior, with pinks, yellows, blues, reds and greens among the shades worn in different areas of the house.

"I didn't expect the impact it would have on me because you first arrive from the top then enter little by little and the entire interior circuit for me was like a grand discovery," says Decq. Just to become accustomed to the house the restoration work started from designing furniture for the exterior with further moving in and remodelling the living room, entrance, restroom and a guest room. While each room served a bold colour, the architect closely worked with several of the original craftsmen that had been used by Lovag; where each year's series of works consisted of numerous progressive concurrences - pre-planned and steadily executed.

"You felt that time had passed there, that the house had a certain age, yet at the same time it was intact, had retained all its objects, everything that had been designed at the time by Antti Lovag," said Decq.

With each of the rooms exceptionally designed, and having a unique identity, the last room at the premises is transformed by setting in all of the houses' colours within it and also creating a kind of sunrise in the room's space that takes in east-west directions on the site. Multi-coloured cushions have been assembled from fabrics leftover from all of the other rooms, thus making it all the more unusual and intriguing.