“Maison a Bordeaux” is a private house. It is situated on the outskirts of the city  Bordeaux, on a hill and overlooks the entire city. It was built between 1994 and 1998 from the architect Rem Koolhaas for Jean-Francois Lemoine. This house is considered  appropriate to be studied for the following reason: It wasn’t built simply for a family that desired a new home, away from the centre of the city and was looking for a more peaceful (quite) life away from it, but presupposed at the same time a pressing need for the owner himself. The owner, after a car crash, was stagnated in a wheel chair. Thus, he wanted a house that would cover his particular needs, while would create different stimuli to him and the rest of the users, since this house would be his own world, as he would be confined to it. The challenge for this construction was rather great for the architect who undertook this task, since he wanted to design a house, that would meet in full the conditions, which make easier the life of a person with physical disabilities and at the same time more enjoyable, while, simultaneously, he would evade the common design solutions, which appear this houses either ground floor either with more floors, that are accessible with ramps or with ordinary lifts. In the case of this special customer, who is confined to a wheelchair, Rem Koolhaas elaborates the meaning “prisoner of architecture”, which is open to various meanings. The accommodation of the house is on three floors, which are accessible with a lift – hydraulic platform: the first level includes the domestic segments, the second the relaxation section and the third the rooms. This building develops research topics, which have already  been suggested by the architect: asymmetry, homes fit, heterogeneity of the materials. The experimental house was not designed to remain stable, but it must evolve with the needs of the owners. For the Lemoine house we could say that depending on each floor, appears a different kind of house. On the first floor we find the primitive hut, on the second floor the glass house of modernity and continuously on the third floor a huge box with punched windows, which are at a specific location. Besides the above, this house is particularly interesting in static mode and in the structural way that was finally selected. At “Maison a Bordeaux”, because of its shape, had to be given particular attention at the process by which was achieved the balance of this structure. Cecil Balmond, the engineer who undertook the house, checks the calculations and the science of engineering in home and manages to take out the challenge, according to which a house must be concentrated and simultaneously it must be suspended at three points. In general, we could say that “maison a Bordeaux” or “maison at Floirac” or “maison Lemoine” (as are the three names, which are used commonly for this) is the house of a family, where the technology and the architecture join forces to create a world, that is simple and complicated at the same time. The architect combines creatively the functionality, the design and the innovation. Already, in the additional inventory of historic data of 2002, this house was considered an architectural gem, that belongs to the end of the 20^th century.

 In the research that was made for this house, it is examined the house’s background (record), the architectural solution that chose the architect in order to make the house more functional and accessible to its owners, its static, its materials, the development of the landscape and the electromechanical installations which are inside. Through this study result conclusions both for the home, when it is examined on its own, but also when it is compared with other homes which present many similarities to “maison a Bordeaux”.