Impressionist Normandy

CONSTRUCTION
Xavier Préchac, Boulmierprechac@wanadoo.fr

Christophe de Laage, contact@decalaage.com

In preparation for the Impressionist Normandy Festival, Varengeville district council decided to rebuild the customs house that once stood beside the track from the church to the shore.
The new building pays homage to the impressionist painters who came to capture Normandy’s unique light, majestic cliffs and beautiful seascapes.
We wanted to reconstruct the customs house depicted in many of Claude Monet’s paintings.
It is a quotation in the landscape, an ephemeral evocation, a light and airy structure, open to all the winds, to all ages, to all dreams: this is how artists conceive of their freedom.
Wood was a natural choice: simple to work with, it could be brought to the site without too much difficulty.
The cabin’s foundations, 11 piles driven into the ground, support a framework of 23 trusses. Gradually, nature will reassert its rights.

Our aim was to produce a contemporary design that respects this extraordinary place and which blends into the landscape via an interplay of transparencies dotted with splashes of impressionist colour – ochre, green, red, yellow, amber.

Project: DécaLaage architectes

“The subject is secondary, what I want to capture is what lies between the subject and me.” Claude Monet