Taking a 40-minute drive east of Montpellier in South of France lies a world-class resort town nestled along the Mediterranean Sea called La Grande Motte (The Big Mound) which is named after a nearby dune. Generally, the tourists describe the town as a ‘Fairy tale vision of a land emerging from unchartered territories of our psyche, loaded with memories, images, sounds, colors, and history. The town’s construction was part of the then French President Charles de Gaulle’s initiative to transform the southwest coast of France into an emerging tourist destination under ‘Project Racine’.
A Tourist’s Paradise
La Grande Motte offers affordable accommodation for 37,800 tourists in the form of vacation homes, rental apartments, and campsites. This resort town is fashioned as a cheaper and family-friendly alternative to popularly emerging Spanish Beaches and the ritzier attractions of Cole d’Azur, located far east. Tourists often called it ‘Concrete Holiday Heaven’ and a 20th-century modernist dream of a French paradise resort. The town makes tourists feel out of time and sometimes disoriented as they arrive at an unfamiliar place in which the built structures futuristically represent the remains of an ancient civilization thus it is also termed as a ‘lost paradise overrun by greenery’. Many travelers mention this town as a ‘Modern Oasis’ from being at the end of the world, almost marginalized outside of society.
The resort town includes zones for camping, a town center, a marina, city parks, public squares and parks, and sports and leisure services to enhance the visitor’s enjoyment. Visitors are initially charmed by the unique allure of the city, transporting them to a sci-fi setting of exceptional photographic potential, rich with iconic architectural elements deeply marked by symbols where every detail seems to have meaning. The resort town appears to visitors like a Kaleidoscope of shapes and patterns, a true visual and hypnotic experience full of big and small surprises.
The shape of the buildings is advantageous, providing opportunity for large terraces, giving as many as possible visitors access to sunlight and views. Tourists are also captivated by the quality of life, sense of lightness, and tranquility that reigns in a city designed for pedestrians and cyclists. The town promotes gentle strolls as parking zones are placed 600 mts. away from the beach, to allow the visitors to walk there. The overall ambiance and architecture of the resort town are like an open book to the visitors to extract valuable experiences from their perspectives as each structure design is open to interpretations and the visitor finally takes away a reverie on permanence of dreams and utopia of human grandeur.
Town’s Distinctive Features
In 2010, the resort town received a 20th-century heritage label for its remarkable contemporary architecture as the entire city is conceived as a timeless work of art. Jean Balladur, architect and planner, along with landscape designer Pierre Pillet, commenced the town’s construction in 1965 by drawing inspiration from the modernist Bauhaus Movement, Le Corbusier’s City Radieuse Residential Complex in Marseille, social planning theories behind Brasilia (capital city of Brazil designed by urban planner Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer). Most importantly, it draws inspiration from symbolic forms of pre-Columbian pyramids in Teotihuacan, Mexico. The town is built with 11 miles of footpaths that are interwoven throughout the area, thus restricting cars to the outskirts. Balladur designed every detail at La Grande Motte including urban furniture, electrical transformers, traffic lights, light fixtures, and signage to create a complete and wholly unified aesthetic work.
Architect Jean Balladur managed to blend the geometry of modern architecture with its pyramidal shapes, with the coastal dunes and Cevennes mountains. The resort town is segregated between two districts- the Levant District showcases the masculine architectural part of town with straight angles and tall pyramids, and the Couchant District is a feminine part with buildings presenting softer curves, intertwined with plant life. One of the town’s iconic buildings is the Great Pyramid as it marks a central point between these two parts- with a straight side marking the beginning of the Levant District and a curved side facing Couchant District. Landscape Architect Pierre Pillet chose plant species that would tolerate the marine climate and held development back from the beach to protect the natural landscape while also creating a pleasurable experience for visitors.
La Grande Motte is truly an ‘Oasis City’, where immersion in nature and the well-being of its inhabitants are at the heart of its urban philosophy. Due to growing tourism, this town became an ideal blueprint for futuristic urban developments in France. The futuristic town thus represents a model of environmental urbanism by promoting modern and nature-oriented lifestyles and favoring slow and rhythmic pedestrian life as per the sun’s course. Therefore, this town- a mesmerizing, sea of strong, elaborate, white geometric buildings peaking out from an expanse of Mediterranean foliage is a living, breathing example of modernist utopian thought where its forms pay homage to the ancient pyramids while embracing advancements and possibilities of the new world.
References:
- La Grande Motte- France’s Modernist City. Available at: https://www.darrenbradleyphotography.com/post/la-grande-motte-france-s-modernist-city
- In the South of France- a Utopian Town inspired by Ancient Pyramids. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/t-magazine/la-grande-motte–french-resort-town.html
