East Side Houses

Owned by Friendly Hotels, La Cachette opens the season in an arch-friendly light. Emblematic of the Arc 1600 resort's construction led by famed Charlotte Perriand, the building has not only modernized its heritage, in keeping with the spirit of the place, but also expanded its interior landscape to four stars.

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A mountain woman in body and spirit, Charlotte Perriand was a skier and mountaineer, and in the 1930s she imagined the perfect ski resort, "which would climb the slope to form a complex where each floor would have a view of the horizon". As the demand for leisure activities reached its peak in the mountains, the creation of Arc 1600 provided her with a blank page. With her team, which shares the same convictions stemming from the modern movement, the visionary concretizes an urbanism and its equipment thought from the inside out, in the heart of the Tarentaise valley. On this land of mountain pastures at the foot of the glaciers, the shallow flatness limits the building space: concentrated and following the slopes, the tiered buildings are integrated horizontally, with a confidential panorama, without any opposite view, under a maximum of sunlight, away from cars; the pedestrian circulation is based on a level curve. Behind their glazed balconies, the residential fittings do not demerit, designed from the open kitchen to the built-in bathroom, from the wooden bench to the metallic wall lamps... "Live in the century and anticipate", she said.

More than half a century later, this avant-garde labeled Remarkable Contemporary Architecture has hardly deviated. "The challenge was to modernize the building and make it more user-friendly, while building on the existing architecture and preserving Charlotte Perriand's legacy," says the Patriarche agency. In addition to an eco-responsible rehabilitation, which reinterprets the original environmental concerns, a narrative design work optimized this heritage fade, between period photos and new codes.

The mountain is a literal thread running through the exterior landscape, from the "cabins" to the suites, slaloming through spaces shared between relaxation, gourmet food, work and spa. Functional authenticity explores Selency's hand-picked furniture, tripod stools and log bedside tables, a hay cover inlaid with dried flowers, etc.

Inspired by the sloping facades of Arc 1600, even the new logo is on top.

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Special issue of Vivre côté Paris n°91H

December 2022