Modern Villas in the Arcachon Basin

The fisherman's hut and the Arcachonnaises, magnificent Belle Époque residences, have shaped the coastline of the Arcachon basin, from the Winter Town of Arcachon to the tip of Cap Ferret. Preceded by the proponents of Art Deco, such as Roger-Henri Expert, and by Le Corbusier, a new generation of creators would, from the beginning of the 1950s, leave their mark, sometimes modernist, sometimes brutalist, on the landscape of the Basin with a series of villas and houses which would give it, alongside rare collective housing, its current unique appearance. Concerned about preserving the natural setting, the architects competed in ingenuity to integrate into this grandiose and fragile territory. Among them, the Bordeaux team Salier-Courtois-Lajus-Sadirac, Raphaëlle and Jacques Hondelatte, and Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal (Pritzker 2021) invented an art of living, with environmentally friendly architecture, which contributed to making this unique natural site known and loved between dunes, pine forest and ocean.

Élise Guillerm is an architectural historian; she is a lecturer at Ensa in Marseille where she is a member of the INAMA research unit.

Jean-Baptiste Marie is an architect. CEO of Europe for architectural and urban projects, he is a professor at Ensa Clermont-Ferrand and a member of UMR Ressources.

Text in French only