Villa Arman (La Bidonville)

Among the few villas designed by Guy Rottier, the one he conceived for the sculptor Arman is the most singular. First of all, the conditions of its conception were complex, divided between the agency in Nice, at the beginning of the project, and Damascus for the later phases (where Guy Rottier went to live and teach). They were also fraught, with a demanding client, a program that was both vague and evolving, and a consultation process largely carried out through a cross-correspondence, interspersed with mutually corrected sketches, between France, then Syria, and the United States (where Arman often stayed).

The design of this villa marked a turning point in Guy Rottier’s practice. The project became the receptacle for the research he was then pursuing, in the spirit of freedom and emulation fostered by his involvement with the École de Nice and with Michel Ragon’s GIAP. In Vence, one thus finds an application of his concept of underground architecture (the villa being embedded in a terrain partially reshaped by terracing), with an open plan suggesting a panoramic transparency effect. The principle of his “lumiducs,” light cannons channeling sunbeams into blind spaces, was applied there, and one of the guest room variants took the form of mobile structures, following the typological model of holiday homes on stilts previously imagined by Guy Rottier in other contexts.

The house’s design process represented an adventure commensurate with its protagonists: a singular client whose artistic renown was exploding at the time of the project, and a designer experiencing a pivotal moment in his intellectual commitment and, consequently, in his production. An extraordinary project in every respect.

(le109.nice.fr)