Villa Les Cyclamens

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

The villa Les Cyclamens on rue Anatole France replaced in 1936 an old residence situated on a property acquired in 1908 by Grenoble entrepreneur Aristide Bonneton, in a sector of Grenoble that was still very little urbanised until the 1920s - urbanisation which would then follow the destruction of the southern ramparts. Bonneton first filed in 1924 a building permit for a small gardener's cottage. Then, in the mid-1930s, his daughter Yvonne and her husband Doctor Ferrieux called upon architect Pierre Bouvier in order to redesign the house in a neo-Basque style inspired by the seaside architecture of the southern Atlantic coast, with marked references to the emblematic Villa de l'Arnaga, property of Edmond Rostand at Cambo-les-Bains. The villa then faithfully reproduced, by integrating them into a modern architecture typical of the 1930s, the characteristic architectural elements of this style, including in the layout of its park, a wooded and built space of 7000 m², which makes it a fairly rare urban testimony of this architectural movement in Isère. For five generations in the same family, the villa was divided into apartments in the 1990s. In 2020, it obtained the Patrimoine en Isère label. It is included in the new ZAC Flaubert project.

Description

The building comprises a certain number of characteristic elements: the asymmetrical two-pitched roof, corbels and corbelling rhythmating the main façade, blood-red timber framing between each partition wall, the rounded form of the door and entrance porch, and especially the arrangement of the park with a pergola of five arcades: this opens at the centre onto a small apse-vaulted pavilion and forms the boundary of the perspective of a French garden extending to the swimming pool, while concealing the old tennis courts; an appendage of the house, projected into the garden bordering the swimming pool like architecture in its own right, it expresses a new way of living that the neo-Basque movement developed throughout its existence. The swimming pool is created as a water mirror in which the villa was reflected against a backdrop of mountain peaks before urban development spread. For the house, the architects retained from the old building the idea of a central avant-corps, topped by a belvedere terrace, transformed into a loggia by the architect. Beyond the entrance porch, a large hall distributes the common rooms and reception rooms. A staircase, bordered by a remarkable ironwork balustrade, serves the old storey of bedrooms. The tree-planted park of 7,000 m² is not without interest. Indeed, its original structure has remained largely preserved, although lacking maintenance: space of the swimming pool with its pergola and tennis courts, masonry squares of kitchen garden, greenhouse and lean-to, gardener's house, arbour sheltering the boules piste, statues and small crossing paths, paved walkways and traces of flower beds, laundry and garage... The trees of varied species have mostly been retained, their current size however modifying the views and perspectives originally intended. The gardener's annexe is in good general condition, still being inhabited.