Mouans-Sartoux - Hamlet of Castellaras-le-Neuf
- department: Alpes-Maritimes
- Municipality: Mouans-Sartoux
- naming: Hamlet of Castellaras-le-Neuf
- address: chemin de Castellaras
- Author: Jacques COUELLE (architect)
- date: 1965
- protection: unprotected building
- label patrimoine XXe: Commission régionale du patrimoine et des sites (CRPS) of 28 November 2000
In 1958 the bank Seligman and the promoter Pierre Beckhardt propose to Jacques Couëlle to create a village around the castle of Castellaras, which he built thirty years earlier (1926) for a rich American art lover (M. Schley). Thus was born the Hamlet of Castellaras which saw the realization in five years of about 90 houses, luxury second homes. Once this operation was completed (1964), the same promoter proposed to Couëlle to continue its creation by designing a new subdivision of 50 additional houses.
After the design studies, he will be able to build only 5 prototype houses-sculptures (probably due to lack of clientele and "resistance" of the municipality, worried about the scope of the project).
The Castellaras le Neuf development project is an opportunity for Jacques Couëlle to continue, after the experience of the old hamlet of Castellaras, his research on "instinct habitat" and "landscape architecture".
The commissioning of luxury holiday homes lends itself well to the development of an unconventional way of living and an architecture of scenery with organic forms inspired by the world of nature (plant and animal).
These themes, dear to the knowledge of sculpture architecture of which Jacques Couëlle is one of the main representatives, are pushed here to mimicry and concealment in the natural site. To avoid the degradation of the landscape, the architect adapts the volumes and plans of the 5 houses to the natural slope of the land. The two levels of housing are staggered and rely on the contour lines without emerging from the ground and the planted ground extends without solution of continuity on the roof garden. When not covered by vegetation, the roof evokes the colour. It extends, "flows", on the facades to promote the descent of rainwater in a plastic movement of great lyrical impact. Seen from below, the volumes and elevations recall by their finish and their sculptural forms, resulting from a scholarly use of projected concrete, eroded rocks or evoke giant anthills. The small openings with irregular contours that characterize the facades amplify this similarity.
Set back from the façade, these holes are protected by "stalactites", "shrub branches" or "thorny brambles" made of concrete or wrought iron. The sculptural elegance of these details and the presence of other works of artists inside the houses (frescoes, sculptures, doors and bodyguards sculpted in wrought iron...), underline the standing of the operation and mark the difference with a spontaneous habitat. The plans of the 5 houses are all different, consistent with the principle dear to Jaques Couëlle of customization of the habitat in relation to the requirements and temperaments of the users. There are nevertheless common elements: a concentric arrangement of the rooms ("snail house") around a patio that is proposed as a privileged place of convergence of views and openings of the house; the presence of a fireplace, foyer of the house; the distribution on the floor by two stairs that energize the perception of the space and also evoke inside the idea of dug paths, galleries of anthills; the colourful windows that filter and modulate natural light to create a more intimate atmosphere.
- Source: Jean-Lucien Bonillo & Raffaella Telese / Laboratoire INAMA / ENSA Marseille, 2005-2008
Read also in Heritage of the 20th century, the study The Glorious Thirty in the Alpes-Maritimes
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