Dear Architecture Enthusiasts,
As Daniela Uslan, I’m thrilled to recommend the awe-inspiring house-sculptures of Jacques Couëlle. This visionary architect, often called the “architect-sculptor,” revolutionized organic architecture from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Couëlle’s masterpieces can be found dotting the landscapes of the French Riviera and Sardinia. His most notable works include:
• The Castellaras estate near Mougins (1955-1960)
• Villa Goupil in Saint-Tropez (1957)
• Palette House in Costa Smeralda, Sardinia (1970)
These structures seamlessly blend with their natural surroundings, featuring curved walls, undulating roofs, and innovative use of materials like reinforced concrete and local stone.
Couëlle’s designs prioritize harmony with nature, often incorporating existing rock formations and adapting to the terrain. His unique approach resulted in homes that feel like natural extensions of the landscape.
For those interested in architectural innovation and organic design, I highly recommend exploring Couëlle’s extraordinary house-sculptures. They offer a truly unique perspective on the integration of art, architecture, and nature.
Learn more about Jacques Couëlle’s work here..
Among the world’s most famous self-taught architects who have contributed to writing a page of architectural history, one cannot fail to mention Jacques Couëlle and his incredible, yet complex, house-sculptures, visible from the French Riviera to Sardinia. Jacques Couëlle was a visionary, so much so that his style is not easy to describe, certainly outside the box. The French poet Jacques Prévert called him an “anarchitect,” precisely because of his ability not to adapt to preset styles.
The house-sculptures of Jacques Couëlle
Jacques Couëlle moved away from the modern style, distanced himself from it. The forms are sculptural, carved, dynamics. His houses fit into the natural context, they respect the environment, the surrounding architecture: it is a style born in the postwar period, where Couëlle sought to make “dwellings of the landscape.” And he sought those unique details, rare, that could only be found in the craftsmanship. His goal was always to build houses where man could be happy, yes. But every aspect had to fit with the outside, creating a unique dynamism.
After all, we are talking about one of the three architects who “invented” the Emerald Coast style. The architect-sculptor used the modern building materials, but he moved away from the strict poetics of angles, being thunderstruck – to say the least – by Antoni Gaudi and organic architectures, curved lines, softness. We are far from rigor, and we are approaching a style that mirrors landscape forms, that takes them up, in a profound dialogue between man and nature.
House-sculptures on the French Riviera
Jacques Couëlle’s house-sculptures on the French Riviera rank among architectural masterpieces: the architect-sculptor’s visions can be felt in every detail. At the time of construction, no small challenge awaited him: the goal was the realization of a state-of-the-art village. Probably the most exclusive in Europe. Couëlle was in the decisive period of his life, as he had the opportunity to put into practice all that he had learned and experimented with, also and especially through his passions (in addition to sculpture, botany, archaeology, and anatomy).
Le Jacques Couëlle’s case-sculpture, near Mougins, integrate perfectly with the surrounding landscape, whose every dogma they respect. More than an architect-artist and visionary, to this day the sculpture-houses on the French Riviera remain a masterpiece, as they are designed to respond to a naturalistic canon of enormous impact. Those fortunate enough to see them live describe the experience as “magic”-those same soft, curved lines we mentioned earlier.
Dragon Hill is a perfect example of this: there are no right angles, but sinuous lines, never rigid, and the window grilles almost resemble spiders. It lacks the rigor of modernism, that same style from which Jacques Couëlle always wanted to distance himself. “It is not enough to create volumes that within them offer a happy space for man and that are beautiful on the outside: they must be integrated into the environment,” Couëlle said. That is why we always chase after the term “landscape houses” when talking about his house-sculptures. It is not just a matter of lines, of course: the anarchitect played with colors, with the spirit of the place, while maintaining the initial premises. Those same ones decided by nature, and not by an architectural style.
The interiors of the sculpture houses on the French Riviera.
The houses were composed as follows. living room with fireplace and period furniture, living room with stone floor, bedroom with brick bed, front door with mosaic. Everything remains in organic, and even curvilinear form, such as the living room door. In the bathrooms of the rooms, however, surprising original tiles, where asymmetry wins out once again, in a striking play of lines. Even the staircases have been decorated and painted, between glazed tiles and glass bricks. In one of the bedrooms, there is even a window that resembles a face: Thinking outside the box, for Jacques Couëlle, meant everything, but even more so respecting the initial premise. Landscape.
Jacques Couëlle’s Houses in Sardinia.
La fame of Jacques Couëlle as an architect who always respected the surrounding landscape has spread to every corner of Europe, including to Sardinia and, to be more precise, to the Costa Smeralda. The Sardinian territory is unique in the world: a magical place, where there was (and is still felt strongly today) a need to preserve the landscape context, while promoting the construction of new buildings. A destination for luxury vacationing, at the time, precisely in the 1960s, intensive construction was to be avoided in favor of exclusive building. Among the investors the Prince Karim Aga Khan, among the architects commissioned by the Architecture Committee of the Costa Smeralda Consortium. (1962) Jacques Couëlle, as well as Antonio Simon Mossa, Michele Busiri Vici, Raymond Martin and Luigi Vietti.
And it was Couëlle himself who was among the key figures who have shaped the style of the Emerald Coast., again respecting the premise: that architectural language in which man and nature coexist perfectly. And here he once again gave it his all: the first project was the Hotel Cala di Volpe, which was later completed in 1963: the famous “Costa Smeralda style” we mentioned earlier. The one that will go down in history and evoke in each of us an idea of refined luxury, never excessive, blending perfectly into the landscape.
In the following years, Jacques Couëlle once again proved his flair, making Villa La Grotta for himself and his wife. A model-sculpture where he drew on the materials of Sardinia, and in fact the result is an enhancement of the land, of Sardinian nature, as powerful and evocative as Couëlle’s houses. And it is on the rocky outcrop of Mount Mannu, in that villa carved into the rock, that Couëlle chose to live. Involving her son Savin later in future projects, such as the Maison du Port On the old port of Porto Cervo. The same pool of Couëlle’s villa on Mount Mannu is not remotely comparable to those made today: what moved his artistic flair was always respect for the context, with a hint of mystery.
