BORDEAUX – ARCACHON BAY

DESCRIPTION – Bordeaux: Arcachon bay

Architecture at sea on the Cap Ferret peninsula

The Arcachon Bay is the favorite vacation spot of Bordeaux residents. With the drying of the marshes ordered by Napoleon III, the town of Arcachon became from 1862 on a haven of peace for the local bourgeoisie attracted by villas scattered along tree-lined paths.

Opposite, the Cap-Ferret peninsula was urbanized from the 1950s onwards, in a more discreet way, and constituted a laboratory of modern architecture, with spectacular holiday homes.

The tour starts with housing estate Le Corbusier designed in Lège in 1924, a prototype for the Cité Frugès in Pessac. An architectural, urban planning and technical revolution at the time, it includes six individual dwellings and the only known example of dormitory housing in Corbusian work.

Following this, a walk in the salt meadows will allow one to discover the unique landscape that surrounds the peninsula and so inspiring to the architecture of the Basin is always linked to wild nature: between oyster farming villages and fishermen’s cabins, between subdivision houses and residences, between sea and Basin, between horizon and forest.

This influence is particularly visible in the work of the Bordeaux school. This architecture office has consorted some of the finest examples of modernist villas between the 60s and the 80s, drawing inspiration from both the Bauhaus movement and Californian architecture. They have reinterpreted these codes and principles in order to adapt them in Cap-Ferret. Several of their works will be discussed: holiday homes (some can be visited inside, on request), a prototype of an industrialized house, a chapel… along the way, other iconic constructions can be approached.

This visit finally offers the possibility of lunch or dinner in one of the many oyster villages, to enjoy the landscape with a few oysters and a glass of wine in hand.