LES ARCS, CHARLOTTE PERRIAND’S MAGNUM OPUS

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Double-height meters and 4 meters in height, allowing for a mezzanine no higher than 1.78 meters under the ceiling. That would exclude that space from the tax assessment, as it would be considered uninhabitable for the purposes of urban planning regulations.723 He probably got the idea from seeing Perriand’s studio, whose mezzanine 1.76 meters under the ceiling opened onto a large volume and was perfectly suitable for sleeping or as a play area for children. Godino asked her to quickly draw up a project so that he could restart construction at Les Arcs. The aim was to build small, properly furnished but affordable structures in the heart of the wooded zone of Charmettoger at the end of the Arc 1800 plateau, the last “village” still untouched by any residential construction.

Perriand, who was very busy preparing her retrospective at the Musée des Arts décoratifs at the time,724 made use of a solution that in some ways recalled the layout of the apartments of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation in Marseille, which she had worked on in the late 1940s. By positioning the duplexes back to back, she was able to recover the volume above the central corridor serving the units and to enlarge them with a mezzanine. “I had a model made of the new leisure apartment type as soon as I got back to Paris, taking into account the retreat aspect of mountain life,” Perriand explained in her memoirs. “They featured 3.96-meter-high glazing and 1.5-meter-deep terraces, opening onto the surrounding forest and its spruces, where bluetits came to frolic in winter, cavorting on the snow-laden branches. Seen from the outside, these glazed buildings resembled artists’ studios. They threaded their way through the forest, creating a synthesis of interior furnishings, architecture, and the environment, one that immediately imparted a sense of space and guaranteed visitors a pleasant stay. The human aspect had been taken into consideration. For Roger Godino, the challenge was to stick to the budget by building on the smallest possible amount of land.”725 To the floor space of 17 square meters Perriand added 20 square meters in the mezzanine, 10 square meters of which were storage space, thus increasing the total floor space of the duplex to over 35 square meters, not to mention the 5.7-square-meter terrace.

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“I first put in the standardized bathroom,” Perriand wrote, “then the utility shafts and the cooking area complete with a work space. I placed a coatroom opposite the cooking area, so that anoraks, ski poles, snow boots, helmets, and backpacks could be put away neatly, and located storage units nearby. I placed a larch-beam structure on top of this ensemble, some 2.1 meters from the ground, held in place by two steel girders fastened to the longitudinal walls. I covered the floor of the ensuing 1.8-meter-high space with a Tapisom carpet, so that children could sleep on futon-like mattresses or sit and play during the day. The staircase to this part of the apartment was a problem, as I didn’t have enough room to put it in the living space. I therefore followed the example of traditional artisans’ dwellings in Japan—where occupants climb up on storage chests that are specially engineered for this purpose—-creating a semi-storage-staircase and carving a well into my beam structure. For safety, I embellished the storage-staircase and children’s space with pine guardrails, so that children wouldn’t fall down into the living area when running around. Finally, I inserted a huge storage unit into the open space above the apartment’s access gallery. The second section of the apartment was devoted to the living room, which extended over the full 3.96-meter height of the duplex. It was fitted with a bar-counter, a sofa that converted into a double bed, a dining-room table, and several stools, as well as a long wall seat that ran along the whole façade, except for the space in front of the terrace door.… Life on two levels could only benefit from the harmony of an interior architecture perfectly incorporated into its environment.” 726 Presenting her project to the developer’s design office in September 1984, Perriand was careful to point out that the minimum dimensions were “extremely tight and require the concrete to be cast exactly.” 727

Knowing that this duplex did not comply with the standards, she cautioned the developer as follows: “Ask for and obtain an exemption from the usual standards as an engineering structure. In any event, the 1.78-meter-high circulation area requires the same approach. These access spaces result from the program specified.”728 The exemption would never be sought, however, if only so as not to attract the authorities’ attention. Godino instead called their bluff and tried to break the deadlock by catching the competition off-guard with a completely new concept. The duplexes were grouped together in three small residential buildings that were kept apart from each other. Called the Mirantins,729 they were almost identical to Bernard Taillefer’s style. Each one was composed of four subsections covered by a different roof, whose slope was parallel to the façade to avoid the drawbacks of the Tournavelles roofs. Each subsection was comprised of three bays across its width and rose to three or four stories high. Each story was served by an outside staircase, which looked rather like a fire escape. The idea was to exploit an absurd feature of the new taxation system that was supposed to revamp the real-estate market, but in fact obliged developers to build outdoor corridors and staircases even at over 2,000 meters in altitude, as in Val-Thorens or Arc 2000.

The duplexes faced southwest or northeast. The ones at either end of the building had an additional opening onto nature. “What pleased me most,” Perriand wrote, “was seeing a young saleswoman’s face light up with a bright smile as she exclaimed, ‘We’re selling!’ Les Arcs had come back to life. Roger Godino had won.”730

Mirantin I, which had forty-one units, was delivered at Christmas 1985; the thirty-nine apartments of Mirantin II, Le Bellachat, were delivered at Christmas the following year; and Mirantin III, La Tournette, with its thirty-one units, was ready for occupancy at Christmas 1987. They all had the same number of square meters, although their layout varied slightly depending on their position under the roof or against the gable walls, where they had an additional opening onto the mountains. Called the “Charlotte Perriand Chalets” or the “Charlotte Perriand Studios,” these low-cost duplex apartments were a great commercial success, which in turn made it possible to kickstart further real-estate development in Les Arcs.

Sensing success for the first building even before its inauguration, Godino launched a new program of 122 duplexes with 531 beds, L’Archeboc. 731 But instead of grouping these in three distinct buildings, as with the Mirantins, he decided, for urban planning and economic reasons, to bring them together in a single building. The architectonic spirit of L’Archeboc was the same as that of the Mirantins. The building was located near the base area of the village of Les Villards, which is where skiers were welcomed and where the shopping center was. It was linked to the Mirantins residence below by the walkway. The duplexes faced either the Isère Valley to the southwest or the ski slopes to the northeast, with a wooded area bordered by the Mirantins in the foreground.

To meet the international comfort standards of a time-share-type cell, 732 the duplex was enlarged by 10 centimeters in width and 16 centimeters in depth. The mezzanine was also modified so that it could be divided into two distinct spaces with the parents’ bed at the front and the children’s beds at the back. Because of these constraints, the direction of the staircase-storage unit that provided access to the mezzanine had to be reversed. The first step was now the banquette along the living-room wall—a layout which had the effect of visually enlarging the room. The standard duplex had a floor space of 18 square meters with a mezzanine of about 15 square meters and a 1.83 by 3.12-meter terrace, making a total of over 38 square meters. The distribution of the units was totally revised in February 1986 after the developer requested modifications. The standard duplex came in twenty-three different versions to allow for the variety of ceiling heights under the roofs as well as seven special layouts. 733 Construction began in June 1986. The studios of the L’Archeboc residence were delivered at Christmas 1986, and construction was finally completed in February 1987.

To meet the demand, the projects in the Charmettoger zone were built consecutively. Godino also launched the construction of a group of three more buildings, L’Aiguille Grive I, II, and III, 734 containing 390 units with 2,000 beds. These were based on clusters of duplexes of the L’Archeboc type and were to be built over a three-year period. The composition of the buildings in an arc had been imagined ten years earlier by Taillefer, Perriand, and Regairaz. 735 Perriand defined seven different duplexes with variously sized living rooms for the 154 apartments of L’Aiguille Grive I, including the nineteen apartments under the