Crestet - Stahly Foundation

• department: Vaucluse
• Municipality: Crestet
• naming: Stahly Foundation
• address : path of La Verrière, the Crestet
• Author: Bruno STAHLY (architect)
• date: 1966-1970
• protection: Inscription under the title of historical monuments by decree of 8 June 1988
• label patrimoine XXe: Circular of 1 March 2001

It was in 1966 that Claude and François Stahly decided to establish a large workshop and their home in Provence, in the heart of nature. The place is a forest site of oaks and pines away from the village of Crestet, near Vaison-la-Romaine. 

The originality of the project lies in the idea of the "collective workshops" that the sculptor François Stahly has been experimenting since 1952, first in Meudon for several years, then in the United States, especially in Aspen (Colorado). The principle is that of sharing a creative workshop with other artists, younger, coming freely to collaborate with the works undertaken by the masters, but also able to develop their own research in a climate of continuous learning and exchange. In Crestet, the Stahlys want to perfect the advantages of such a space by installing it, like a monastery, in the heart of a "desert" in the Cistercian sense of the term.
 
The mastermind of this place is Bruno Stahly (born 1937), son of Claude and François Stahly. 

The program is submitted to him before the end of his studies as an architect, and his project will be long matured, constituting even the subject of his diploma. After an experience of learning, travel, successful internships (notably Mies Van Der Rohe in Chicago and also Marcel Lods), and about ten years of liberal practice, Bruno Stahly began a career of public service, first as architect of the Buildings of France and member of the General Council of Bridges and Highways then Inspector General of Historic Monuments.
 
"When I discovered the slope of this hill," said Bruno Stahly, "when I went down the path that enters the ground, at some point I stopped, sure that the house had to be there to fit the profile of the slope. I felt I would have to compose the plan from the top and deduce the lower floors from the layout of the terraces."
Composing from the top is the principle that allows us to understand this building to which we access by its upper part and which is at first seen as a set of terraces and articulated volumes, dialoguing with the northern line of the horizon. Opting for a frank modern architecture, deliberately conceived as a sculptural ensemble—not unrelated to the work of François Stahly—the project is based on a principle of introversion in relation to the surrounding nature judged by too many "immense, impressive, oppressive".

The outer walls are designed as blind walls—allowing the nearby landscape to penetrate only through narrow slits—and it is towards two large inner patios that the workshops are turned on one side, the dwelling on the other. It is also against the mistral, particularly violent in this region of Provence, that these walls effectively make rampart. Gradually, the outdoor spaces and part of the forest became places of creation and exhibition of contemporary sculptures (Parc forestier du Haut Crestet). 

The ensemble was acquired in 1983 by the Centre national des arts plastiques.

• Editor: Jean-Lucien Bonillo, ensa Marseille, 2002 
• Source: 20 monuments of the 20th century, modern heritage exhibition in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, eaml, 2002