Tuesday, 15 November 2011

La Grande Motte









I was fascinated by the appearance of this seaside town. It is fairly modern for Europe, about the nineteen sixties. The buildings have been designed to look like Egyptian pyramids. And there's a whole lot of them! This town just looks so different from others in the area, quite striking.

1 comment:

  1. A very similar pyramid-shaped building was designed and built by a (European) French architect for the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, to house the athletes. Once the Olympics were over, the building was rented out as residential apartments. The grand failure of the design was that the designer didn't take into account our heavy snowy winters, thus rendering the open-to-the-elements-of-weather hallways useless and inaccessible to the front doors of the apartments. Eventually the hallways had to be closed in to keep the snow out. Imagine getting off the elevator and having to use a snow shovel with one hand to dig your way to your front door as you juggle 3 or 4 bags of groceries in the other hand! *sigh*.... we never learn.....not to hire architects who do not understand or underestimate the weight and volume of our snow, and the sub-zero temperatures of our Canadian winters.

    ReplyDelete