La Grande-Motte, a seaside resort in southern France that attracts some two million tourists a year, is finally proving the naysayers wrong.
Built in the 1960s and 70s by architect Jean Balladur on virgin beachfront dunes, its prominent pyramidal buildings with large open space around them have not always been popular.
For decades it was nicknamed La Grande Moche (‘The Great Ugly’) or Sarcelles-sur-Mer (Sarcelles-On-Sea), in a derogatory nod to Paris’s northern suburb of Sarcelles (Val-d'Oise), which epitomises France’s controversial Grand Ensemble architectural movement – the large-scale, high-rise housing projects synonymous with postwar urban planning.
Over time, however, attitudes have changed. The focus has shifted from La Grande-Motte’s grey urbanity to the now praised but long-forgotten presence of its green spaces.
So much so that the resort now looks quite the model town for the 21st century.
Read more: French architecture: Marseille's 24-year wait for mosque
Award-winning architecture
Mr Balladur never lived to see this vindication of his efforts. He died in 2002, eight years before La Grande-Motte was awarded Patrimoine du XXe siècle by the Occitanie region, a tour de force considering the label is usually only given to a single building.
“It is outstanding revenge for Mr Balladur,” said Gilles Ragot, an art historian at Bordeaux-Montaigne University who has written a book about the architect and his work.
He explained that during the 1960s, when the resort was conceived, France’s architectural world was in thrall to minimalism.
Mr Balladur’s vision was a 180-degree turn but “this type of architecture did not appeal,” said Mr Ragot.
“The press were lazy and ignorant, pigeon-holing it as just another Grand Ensemble project. In fact, La Grande-Motte has nothing in common with that movement,” he said.
“Mr Balladur could be regarded as the first postmodern architect,” he added.
Swamp land
Before La Grande-Motte, the site, near Montpellier (Hérault), was simply dunes, swamps and open fields. Wild horses – and mosquitoes – were among its only residents.
It takes its name from a large mound (grande motte) used by sailors as a point of reference for navigation.
This, thought Charles de Gaulle, was the perfect site for his ‘mission Racine’ to take root – a 1963 policy that aimed to create resort towns along 180km of coastal land in southern France to stem the tide of French holidaymakers driving further down the coast to the Costa Brava in Spain. It was marketed as France’s ‘New Florida’.
Construction started at La Grande-Motte in 1965 on 1,500 hectares.
Jean Balladur, the cousin of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (1993-1995), was inspired by his vacations in South America – in particular the pre-Columbian pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico, and the modernist concrete architecture of Brazil’s capital Brasília.
His tall pyramid-shaped buildings made of lily-white concrete reflected the light and favoured undulating organic shapes.
“The shape of a pyramid fits into a flat landscape much more seamlessly than a vertical building would because it does not have the same aggressive aspect that breaks up the horizontal of the ground,” he said in an interview, defending his project.
An added benefit of the buildings was to tame the effect of the wind – the powerful Tramontane and Mistral especially.
Read more: Royan: Visit this French sea town rebuilt with Brazil-inspired style
Pyramid scheme
La Provence and Le Grand Pavois, near the port, were the first two pyramids to be built before the district of Point Zero - where the big mound is - and La Capitainerie joined the panorama in 1968.
The Great Pyramid, the resort’s emblematic 15-storey-high building, was inaugurated in 1973.
La Grande-Motte officially became a commune in 1974 and grew each year, adding new buildings for residents, administration, a mairie, school, a high school and a cemetery. In total, more than 100 architects worked on the project.
The resort’s first settlers might have needed some convincing of its merits – and a thick skin when their decision was called into question around the dinner table – but most quickly grew to love it.
“What I really like about living here is the architecture – the notion of opposites, of ying and yang, the union of opposites that creates harmony. There's a kind of harmony to be found at La Grande-Motte,” said Caroline Geolle, a professional photographer who moved there in 1995.
“Something was happening between wild nature and concrete. It was as if the earth sort of integrated the town,” she said.
“It is the perfect place for artists,” she added. Her own photography work is largely inspired by La Grande-Motte.
Her comments do not surprise Mr Ragot.
“There are a variety of forms and shapes in La Grande Motte that simply do not exist in the monotonous Grand Ensemble buildings,” he said.
“The main quality of this type of architecture is precisely to arouse senses and the imagination.”
Inspired by nature
Many of the buildings are open to interpretation. La Capitainerie, built by French architect Paul Gineste, is widely held to resemble the shape of a whale.
The Levant district is presented as the “masculine” part of La Grande-Motte because of the rigidly linear buildings. Those of Le Couchant district, meanwhile, are called the ‘Conques de Vénus’ because their curved lines and lightness are both perceived to be ‘feminine’ traits.
Even more fancifully, the Acapulco residence, another building complex, is said to look like Charles de Gaulle’s nose in profile.
Administrative, cultural and religious buildings, commercial spaces and residences represent only 30% of the total area of La Grande-Motte.
The other 70% is given over to nature, with 36,000 trees – two-thirds pine and one-third deciduous trees – and 45,000 flowers designed by landscaper Pierre Pillet.
Much like Mr Balladur did with the buildings, Mr Pillet organised the planting to limit the effects of powerful winds, placing tamarix and olive trees along the shoreline and lining up pine, cypress and poplars behind.
Green planning
Greater awareness of the effects of global warming, a focus on greener urban planning policies, and positive feedback from residents may be some of the reasons why La Grande-Motte has been trending recently.
In 2020, the tourism office organised a roundtable discussion to look at the possibility of La Grande-Motte expanding from a resort to a mid-sized town.
“It was always intended as a mid-sized town,” said Mr Ragot.
“Without any ambition to be a visionary architect, Mr Balladur understood what was at stake. It was about providing affordable housing to the middle class and the retirees,” he added.
La Grande-Motte celebrated its 50th anniversary on May 11, the birthday of Mr Balladur, by inaugurating two beachwalk alleys.
“No one will ever forget this man and his humanist conception of architecture, aimed at recreating a ‘lost paradise’ on earth," said mayor Stephan Rossignol.
“If I were God, I would be wary of architects! They are the subversive instrument of the secret project of the human species: to recreate a lost paradise,” wrote Mr Balladur in a notepad once. He was talking about La Grande-Motte.
