Bormes-les-Mimosas - Villa l'Esquillette

  • department: Var
  • Municipality: Bormes-les-Mimosas
  • naming: Villa l'Esquillette
  • address: 126 rte de l'Esquillette - Domaine du Cap Bénat
  • Author: Philip JOHNSON (architect)
  • date: 1964
  • protection: building not protected heritage XXth: Commission régionale du patrimoine et des sites du 28 November 2000

In 1962, architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005) was asked by M. and Mme Boissonnas, a wealthy American couple, to build a villa on the Cap Bénat estate, located on the tip of the Esquillette, in the Var. The site offers a panoramic view of the bay of Lavandou and the Corniche des Maures, but also many constraints related to the relief.

The villa consists of five separate pavilions, three of which are articulated around a slate-slab patio overhanging a white wavy concrete canopy resting on four conical columns. As usual, Philip Johnson uses the site to create a staging of the volumes, and offers open-air passageways to connect the pavilions and offer a progressive discovery of architecture. Each pavilion has blind walls on the ground side, and large bay windows on the sea side, with the exception of the living room, entirely glazed, built on the model of the architect’s personal house, the "glass house", in New Canaan (Connecticut).

  • Editor: Eve Roy, drac paca crmh, 2005

Notice imprimable