Imagicasa October 2022

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P
arents of three children, entre-
preneurs notably in the fields
of fashion and music, and pho-
tography enthusiasts, Anne and
François Moret never stop liv-
ing new adventures between uprooting
and rooting. After having lived in Brussels,
Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Silver Lake,
the couple has taken an umpteenth turn
and has been spending their time between
Paris and Arles since 2020. ‘It was through
the Rencontres d’Arles, where we go every
summer, that we discovered this small
town in the Camargue, which is booming
with art and culture. We wanted to find a
place that would bring the family together.
So one of our close French friends told us
about the sale of this incredible modernist
house that had been left in its original state
since it was built. We fell in love imme-
diately, despite the prospect of a complete
renovation. The building, listed as a twen-
tieth century heritage site, reminded us of
the American architects of the 1950s, and
more particularly Frank Lloyd Wright,’
says François Moret cheerfully.
Commissioned by the Bank family in 1972,
who had the extreme audacity to want a
very original, even avant-garde house for
a region that was rather traditionalist in
those years, the Villa Bank, built with to-
tal freedom of expression by the archi-
tect Emile Sala (1913-1998), opens up to
nature, unlike the often dark Provençal
mas. While the soul and character of this
An architectural icon designed in the 1970s by French architect
Emile Sala and resided for decades in the Arles countryside is
now given a new lease of life by a Belgian couple and an art
collector who have returned from California.

2. IMAGICASA | 9
breathtaking building have been
preserved by the new occupants in
order to enjoy a true historical ex-
perience, its metamorphosis is an-
chored in the present. ‘Not wanting
to make the seventies sacred, nor
to reuse the original materials and
colours such as cork, carpet on the
walls and the ever-present orange
or brown tones, we collaborated
with interior designer Jean-Claude
Perucca and the best craftsmen in
the region to bring this gem up to
date, without erasing the original
architecture,’ explains Anne Moret.
The interior walls were smoothed
before being painted in off-white, a
deliberately light colour, as were the
original rough travertine floors, in
order to make the most of the light
and the display of the collection of
photos and paintings acquired by
Anne and François Moret during
their thirty years together. There
are almost no sharp angles to dis-
turb the view; the only things that
stand out are the fluid movements,
the balance of proportions, the exaltation
of light, the ellipses and the rounded move-
ments. The curve of the tower, caught be-
tween wide and dynamic walls, softens the
vertical tension of the building, offering an
enveloping, reassuring and intimate sensa-
tion. The masterly brass fireplace designed at
the time by the sculptor Max Sauze, around
which the winter evenings are organised,
sets the atmosphere alight and is in itself
one of the central elements of the house. To
this original architectural vocabulary is now
added a play of grey colours, the plumb ceil-
ings lacquered with ten or so coats of paint
with sanding between each coating, floors
covered with large slabs of concrete-effect
tiles or kitchen furniture in cocoa-coloured
Fenix® on which lies a worktop in flamed
black granite from Zimbabwe, made to
measure by Art Concept in Nîmes, giving
the whole a contemporary African spirit.
In the background, two Revolver stools by
Leon Ransmeier (Hay), purchased from
États des Lieux in Arles, are placed around
the small high table used for snacks. A
large number of works, objects and fur-
niture by current and renowned artists
represented by the famous Spazio Nobile
gallery, based in Brussels and directed by
Lise Coirier, punctuate the space. At the
An armchair
in milky leather
in dialogue with
a floor lamp by
Georges Pelletier

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foot of the slender staircase is an impos-
ing fir-green ceramic by Bela Silva (Spazio
Nobile) on which is placed a wooden lamp
by Georges Pelletier. An opulent tapes-
try by Jacqueline Surdell (Spazio Nobile)
hung above the white piano gives relief
and texture to the wall. In the living room,
a Sofà sofa designed by Francesco Bin-
faré (Edra) and a large vintage leather and
wood armchair found at Twentieth, a gal-
lery in Los Angeles, surround an Œil-T22
coffee table by Pierre Chapo (1972) found
at 50 Cinquante in L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue.
A sheepskin rug by Carine Boxy
(Spazio Nobile) warms the pol-
ished bronze Adé stool designed
by François Champsaur (Maison
Intègre). In the circular dining
room, topped by a natural light
shaft, the round wooden table by
Belgian cabinet maker and design-
er Kaspar Hamacher (unique mod-
el for Spazio Nobile) is surrounded
by Osso chairs by Erwan & Ron-
an Bouroullec (Edition Mattiazzi).
There, a photograph of ‘Tony’ by
the Dutchwoman Dana Lixenberg
(1993), purchased from the Grimm
Gallery in New York, is set in the
middle of a set of windows of dif-
ferent sizes, as many quadrangular
openings towards a garden that we
can imagine abounding.
On the mezzanine of the first floor
landing, a Marsala armchair in
milky leather by Michel Ducaroy
for Ligne Roset is in dialogue with a
floor lamp by Georges Pelletier and
photographs by Autumn de Wilde and Mick
Rock. Like a parallelogram elevation, a prim-
itive wooden statue of the Bongo tribe in
Sudan, two and a half metres high, has found
its most beautiful place alongside a black and
white photographic work by the Japanese
artist Daido Moriyama, all of which faces
the frame of the giant bay window which
stands in the living space. In the intimate
cocoon of the master suite, an Indian ink by
the Parisian artist Elena Simon seems to be
watching over the bed covered with a salmon
linen sheet (The Conrad Shop), the Thonet

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wooden stool as a bedside table and a
photograph by Viviane Sassen placed on
a chest of drawers by the Dutch design-
er Cees Braakman, bought in a Brussels
auction room. A zen and country bias, the
soft lines and squared openings on the
outside that change with the hours are
a constant call to nature. A bewitching
osmosis between the typical brightness
of the south and the strong architectural
perspectives, this sunny place offers lu-
minous and lively pictures of the field of
Crau hay in its natural state which bor-
ders the building, the beds of grasses in
the garden, a touch of wildness spiked
with cacti, eucalyptus, fig trees and um-
brella pines, or the hundred-year-old
magnolia tree that shades the Roda table
and chairs of the Brazilian rose quartz
terrace undulating nonchalantly in this
new landscape context created in 2020 by
Fréderic Trifilio. Hidden at the end of a
path where reeds and ferns sway, this res-
olutely human-sized residence has rein-
vented itself in a marvelous recomposed
past. (Text: Suzanne Wathelet)
The soft lines
and squared
openings are a
constant call
to nature
Photography
by
Matthieu
Salvaing