Fabron
The apartment renovation is a small chapter in a longer trajectory of spatial practices devoted to inhabiting the hills above the Côte d’Azur. The site is a palimpsest of cultivated leisure and speculation, where mid-1980s residential blocks are grafted onto the remains of a jardin d’agrément by Octave Godard, once belonging to a villa balnéaire later demolished for real-estate development.
From the outside, the residential complex plays along with the historical garden. The apricot-plastered walls extend from the façades into the landscape, curving around paths, holding the terraces, setting off the lush plantings. Inside, the apartment gives way to the logic of efficiency: low ceilings, a rigid day/night division, intricate corridors. Almost every wall is load-bearing; the plan can barely move.
The renovation takes on the larger task of countering the limits of pragmatism by drawing the spatiality of the kaleidoscopic garden inside. It turns fragmentation into continuity, creates moments of enticement and discovery, breaks the rigidity of the concrete box, and opens the rooms to light, reflections, intimate glimpses of the garden, and panoramic views over the bay. Surfaces are the main arena of intervention: mirrors, stripes, circles, and lines compose a domestic environment that actively participates in the emotional life of its inhabitants. In the smaller rooms floor and ceiling are active agents of enclosure, while in the living room the walls become protagonists. They take on an order that embraces two contrasting exterior conditions: the panorama of the sea bay on one side, and the close presence of the pine tree on the other.
Towards the sea, the wall plane dissolves into a vertical order of freestanding apricot-coloured planes, extending the façade into the interior and defining a zone of prospect. Towards the garden, it thickens into horizontal deep-green bands of cabinets, framing a zone of refuge. A slender column pins down the meeting point between the two systems.
