Surrounded by vineyards and centuries-old woods, the Château d’Ambrus is an imposing building in the Lot-et-Garonne department, dating back to the 13th century. The clients, a French-Vietnamese entrepreneurial couple, have chosen it as a holiday villa for themselves and their large family. As a request from the clients the project was guided by contemporary functionality and therefore the integration of new systems.The renovation, carried out by the Locatelli Partners studio, took a radical approach by demolishing the walls that had divided the interior into many small rooms, creating larger and more modern spaces. Another key decision was to use a limited selection of materials that would engage in a contemporary dialogue with the original stone from which the castle is built: cast-in-place concrete was used on the ground floor to create a continuous new flooring; handmade terracotta in various formats produced by a local artisan; pine wood from the surrounding forests for the bedrooms and custom furnishings; and a special type of lime plaster selected for its warm tone on all new walls.An exotic touch—actually a tribute to the clients’ heritage—was reserved for the bathroom finishes: all tiles were handmade in Vietnam in various shapes and sizes, as were the colored marble sanitary fixtures from Vietnam.The furnishings were expertly selected from the clients’ personal collection, always seeking an elegant balance between modern and contemporary elements and antique pieces that have long been part of the château.
