Contents
6 Foreword 12 Paris 88
Heading South
96 Provence 134
Haute Provence
154
Normandy
164
Aquitaine and Entre-Deux-Mers
188
Envoi
192 Credits and Acknowledgments 194
References
196 Biographies
Adolphe Alphand. Even in their present altered state, they have profoundly influenced me as a landscape architect. The French love public parks and spend a great deal of time in them. Not surprisingly, there are many contradictions when one delves into the subject of parks and gardens in France, for the French are a delightfully (or maddeningly) contradictory bunch. One day they seem the children of Descartes—rational and methodical to a ridiculous degree, bloodless slaves to rules and endless regulations; at other times they seem totally passionate, irrational, and emotional, unwilling to submit to any authority. One example of this contradictory nature: there are nice parks—large and small—throughout the city, yet they are chock full of fences, screens, rails, barriers, gates, hedges, and walls. Everywhere a remarkable manifestation of the love of boundaries, containment, and demarcation is present. No other western country so fills its public spaces with the trappings of private boundaries and territorial reservation. For all their imagination and
paris
“Place des Vosges, unfinished sketch of the square with one of the nineteenth-century fountains. Abandoned because of one of the well-known and frequent spring showers.”
17
opposite Window—Hotel de l'Avenir, Rue Madam near the Luxembourg. View of café opposite whose shutters go up noisily every morning at 7:00 a.m., followed by the garbage man collecting bottles and cans with almost as much noise—no matter how hot or crowded, Paris satisfies. sb 95/1993 left The elegant proportions of windows and rooms of the Belle Époque speculative housing of the Haussmann-era redevelopment in an apartment on the Rue des Grands-Augustins. sb 130/2002
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haute provence
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Four of the bridges over the Seine seen from the quai on the Île de la Cité, two pedestrian and two vehicular: the Pont des Arts, the Pont du Carrousel, the Pont Royal, and the Passarelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor. On the right bank are the Pavillon de Flore and the long flank of the Louvre; on the left, a flotilla of barges and houseboats beside the Quai de Conti. It was a difficult sketching day as showers kept moving through, a common Paris phenomenon, bringing cool air and pearly skies, the river silver; the city scrubbed and shiny. sb 140/2005
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Chateau de Ribas: CĂ´tes-du-RhĂ´ne vines and windbreak of poplars with the hills that shape the river valley in the distance. The only people out and about in the vineyard in the sun and heat beside myself were a couple of Algerian laborers tending irrigation ditches, and moving the pipes and boards of gates and hatches to transfer water from one set of thirsty vines to another. sb 83/1991
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haute provence
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Bags of dry pigment, Dauphin. Colors derived from the earth of the region used in painting the house, its plaster walls, and trim. The image is of Mont Ventoux in the Alpilles to the west, which was climbed by the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch and has been associated with the development of landscape art ever since. sb132/2002
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haute provence
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Normandy
T
he landscape of Normandy is remarkably green and lush due to the consistent precipitation blowing in off the North Atlantic, thereby encouraging the production of superb fruit, especially apples. The seasonal temperature and moisture also promote particularly lush meadows and pastures, resulting in a great situation for livestock and the production of dairy products, especially butter and cheese. The region has seen the departure and arrival of flotillas and armies through the centuries. It has been ravaged and recovered numerous times, beginning its recorded history with Celts, Angles, and Saxons, followed by Romans, then Vikings, Goths, and Vandals. In the twentieth century, the famous tapestry residing in Bayeux, which depicts the conquest of England in the eleventh century, was sent into hiding when the Allies arrived to drive out the Nazi regime in 1944. For several hundred years between the era of William the Conqueror and that of Eisenhower, numerous wars and battles were waged here between the English and French. Nevertheless, there remains a remarkable and multilayered collection of architecture in the region, ranging from handsome half-timbered structures and walled stone farm compounds to medieval churches and twentieth-century war memorials and museums. Between the dense and ubiquitous hedgerows that caused so much grief in the last war, one can find some of the most expensive and prestigious horses in the world along with orchards that produce Calvados and cheese factories for Camembert, Brie, and Pont l’Évêque.
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At Putot-en-Auge we found a small village church with burials for thirteen British airborne troops between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three, who were killed here on the 29th and 30th of August 1944, during the final allied breakout of the Battle of Normandy. Everywhere are reminders of the fierce fighting of World War II in this region. Damage from bombs and artillery can still be seen in the public building facades in Rouen. Entire new town centers exist in many of the various places that were pounded flat that summer. Among the many places I would have liked to have spent more time poking about drawing is the delightful town of Deauville, which lies on the south side of the mouth of the river Seine, opposite its less prosperous twin, Trouville. A famous seaside resort with a mélange of architecture that includes nineteenth-century guest villas, Coco Chanel’s first small shop, and Erik Satie’s childhood home—now a museum—it faces the sea with a long and marvelous enfilade of a municipal art deco casino and spa, complete with dozens of cabanas, along a boardwalk encrusted with decades of legendary movie star and director plaques that came for its summer film festival. There are enormous Belle Époque half-timbered hotels, petite bed and breakfasts, and a superb market square—with requisite and expansive timber pavilion and mounds of gleaming vegetables and produce, flowers, herbs, and plants; surrounding stalls with bread and baked goods, ranks of tables laden with heaps of cheese; butchers and venders of sausage, patés, and meats; and a cornucopia of fresh oysters, mussels, scallops, clams, snails, and an array of Atlantic fish.
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Chateau Sentout on the left and Chateau Lacaussade on the right. The latter is older, built in the sixteenth century as a seriously fortified farm, continuously owned by the decedents of its builders, and conservatively retains its early style. Chateau Sentout has passed through many hands since it was first built by its seventeethcentury owner, who made his fortune in the triangle trade. Its west face hides a nicely conceived main block, which had previously been updated in the eighteenth century. While these vineyards and chateaux produce good wine, the lower, flatter lands of the coastal plain on the west bank have historically produced even better, or certainly more prestigious ones, namely Medoc and Haut Medoc, which includes Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Margaux, Graves, and Sauternes. sb 134/2003
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aquitaine and entre-deux-mers
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above top Plan of Chateau Sentout and its immediate grounds. Once a working estate with vineyards and its own winery, today it provides accommodations for visitors to the region. sb 134/2003
aquitaine and entre-deux-mers
above Chateau Sentout seen from the east. The long wall once belonged to a storage building where the wine of the chateau aged in oak barrels. The small barred windows allowed ventilation to keep it cool. Above the wall, from left to right, are the roofs of a carriage house, the chapel, and various towers, turrets, and roofs, which were the height of fashion when added. sb 135(a)/2003
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above top A list of the cast of characters staying at the chateau: twelve of our family members(!), a Belgian and a British family, the owners, their parents and children, various workmen, cleaners, dogs, cats, birds, and bats; also notes on a trip to Rochefort and Crazannes to visit design projects by Bernard Lassus. sb 135(a)/2003
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above Notes from visit to Saint-Émilion: “The wines are wonderful—and there really is a difference. I very much enjoyed a Pomerol, very spicy and full, but smooth.” The doodle is of the Chateau’s chapel. sb 135(a)/2003
above top “The ruins of the old wine storage barn or warehouse. The double roof, originally an idea to reduce span and height, when not maintained in central gutter produces disaster.We saw this same type updated in Rafael Moneo’s new winery at Estella in Spain.” sb 135(a)/2003
aquitaine and entre-deux-mers
above “I don’t think I’ve ever seen capitols, Romanesque or other, more deeply carved nor heavy yet animate than here.” Nave of the church of once powerful Abbaye de La Sauve-Majeure, founded in 1079 by Saint Gérard near Créon in the Entre-Deux-Mers region between Bordeaux and Saint-Émilion. Scholars have concluded that what seem to be bunches of grapes and intertwined vines, may also be pine cones, as in earlier Greek and Persian decoration. sb 135(a)/2003
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