Description

Villefranche-sur-Mer is a place of seductive beauty. Above the harbour, white cliffs rise along which the coastal road between Nice and Monaco runs. To the east is the picture postcard idyll of Cap-Ferrat with the softly curving line of the peninsula, whose dense pine forests conceal holiday villas and their gardens from public view. Barren austerity and lush luxury both have their place along this rocky stretch of coast. Between the two extremes lies Villefranche, its protected anchorage prized since early antiquity by the Romans, wild pirate tribes, the Counts of Savoy and finally the Americans, who based their Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean until 1962. The place has many qualities: alongside its strategic military position, it is a haven for natural scientists. The coastline here drops more than 100 metres steeply to the sea bed and forms a catchment basin for deep-sea fauna and flora, which is washed up by the strong coastal current. For oceanologists, it is an El Dorado because one can study the life of the deep sea in the immediate vicinity of the coast, without the associated dangers of deep sea oceanic exploration. The Institut de la Mer de Villefranche (IMEV), which is now a branch of the Sorbonne University, already uses several historical buildings in Villefranche. The new building houses a laboratory with a light-protected water basin for conducting experiments on sensitive plankton cultures from the deep. The main part of the new building, however, is the guest house above it which contains 42 rooms for visiting international scientists who stay anything between one week and six months.

As in their previous projects, CAB Architectes have created a calm and serene building for the required building programme. The building comprises a series of long, low horizontal bars above one another that each have a clear function. The base is the massive walls of the citadel of Saint-Elme, which the Counts of Savoy had built in the 17th century to protect the entrance to the port. The new residential complex has an air of simple functionality and is set into the hillside, blending into the overall ensemble. The complex is reached from the road via a ramp to the parking deck on the second floor of the base. Discreet staircases provide pedestrians access to the different levels of the building. A staircase lit by a dimmed skylight leads visitors first to the laboratory wing. On the next level above are the parking decks, followed by the actual entrance level and communal spaces grouped around a courtyard. Only here does the building open up to the bay, an elongated incision above a pool of water framing the view.

The building only takes on a representative character on this third floor. Below it is the solid plinth containing the technical infrastructure, above it an open space defined by two separate sections of the building set against each in an L-shape. One of the two sections is braced against the slope like a retaining wall, holding back the rock face, so to speak. The second closes off the horizon and frames the Maritime Alps rising behind it. The communal spaces and the seminar room do not have a direct view of the sea, almost as if the architecture wishes to remind the research community of their focus, but on the two upper floors of the second wing, each of the residential units, reached via a gallery walkway at the rear, has an uninterrupted view of the sea. The double rooms are located in the east wing, while the single rooms are in the south wing and are not self-contained units but share a bathroom with one of the two adjoining rooms and the balcony with the other neighbour. At the front of the two wings are apartments with a different floor plan for researchers with restricted mobility.

The building is ultimately a reflection on everyday life in a community. It can be seen as a continuation of the deliberations begun in the Charterhouse of Galluzzo, the residential community of Jean-Baptiste Godin, Ivan Nikolaïev’s Communal House of the Textile Institute in Moscow and Le Corbusier’s La Tourette.

Originally published in Bauwelt 12.2019, pp. 44-49, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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