Savines-le-Lac - Village
- department: Hautes-Alpes
- commune: Savines-le-Lac
- name: Village
- author: Achille de Panaskhet (architect)
- date: 1954-1962
- 20th century heritage label: Regional Heritage and Sites Commission (CRPS) of 23 June 2011
The reconstruction of Savines between 1954 and 1962 represents an unprecedented urban experience. For ten years, its author Achille de Panaskhet, will devote himself entirely to the creation of Savines-le-Lac, from urban planning to public space, from public architecture to private buildings.
While the development plan of the Durance foresaw the disappearance of the villages of Ubaye and Savines, even before the promulgation of the 1955 law that ratified the construction of the Serre-Ponçon dam, the population of the village, a third of whom worked in a spinning mill, the pulp mill or sawmill, will be very reluctant to the conditions of compensation made by the administration. After more than a year of tension, an agreement was reached with Prime Minister Guy Mollet in 1956, including the reconstruction of the village.
The architect who took up the cause of the town draws a series of urban composition plans. First on the adret of Clot du Villard, close to the new station, and industries. Then with the construction of the bridge, made necessary by the water reservoir, it is at the foot of the Morgon that the new Savines moves, becoming the strategic village on the crossroads linking Gap, Embrun and Barcelonnette. At the edge of the Trente Glorieuses, the development of road transport is favoured over the railway. Village stage on the road of the Alps, the development of the automobile will go hand in hand with that of tourism.
Achille de Panaskhet will produce a series of plans that will lead to the 1957 Retail Urban Plan, a framework for the development of the new Savines. There are sectors dedicated to activity, low-rent housing, houses, recreation and communal facilities: city hall, post office, school, gendarmerie and church, organizing around a civic center an authentic public space; At the same time the old hamlets of Forest and Chaumettes are preserved.
The plan is not a simple figure, it also comes from the study of public spaces, that of the main buildings of the village but also that of the other constructions defined in their location, their size and their architectural character: roofing, materials, holes. It is a project designed in its urban as well as architectural dimension, which will prove able to evolve at various times of the rapid growth of the village.
Between 1959 and 1962 our architect will manage no less than a dozen sites: factories, school, gendarmerie, town hall, post office, bridges and Chausées, collective and individual housing, development of public space. The church of Saint Florent will be completed shortly before the inauguration of 1962 and it will use an accidental immobilization to draw the detail of the boxes of the stained glass windows. The rebirth of Savines will take place in extreme urgency!
The main feature of the architecture of Achilles de Panaskhet in Savines-le-Lac is the refusal of the picturesque model of the chalet in favor of a creation architecture, horizontal, tapered, underlined by strips of light concrete, and almost flat roofs. This architecture also borrows from local resources with materials such as wood or marble stones from the region.
- Editor: Thierry Durousseau, 2011
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