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ITall began with a farm immortalized in Godard’s film, “Pierrot le Fou” in 1965. The architect Henri Vidal then transformed the building into a villa and raised it to view the sea. The Courtade estate thus appears surrounded by thirty- five hectares of vines whose wine always delights connoisseurs.
Édouard Carmignac fell under the spell of the estate and imagined making it a place dedicated to the arts. It was in 2014 that the Barani workshop and then the GMMA agency gave birth to this unusual place of the Art Foundation by freeing up 2000m2 of space under the house without its contours or the landscape being modified.
Inside the villa, the spaces expand and unfold in the shape of a cross and, in the center of the museum, a transparent water ceiling allows light to penetrate and illuminates the spaces thus immersed. The Port-Cros National Park is the first land and sea park in Europe.
The islands of Porquerolles and Port-Cros benefit from a high level of protection given the exceptional nature of their sites and the presence of numerous protected species.
Villa Carmignac is part of a series of concrete, sustainable and ecological actions. It benefits from the “Esprit Parc” label awarded to establishments which are committed to the preservation and promotion of national parks.
The garden was designed by landscaper Louis Benech as a “non-garden”, a place of nature in which the Foundation endeavored to generate a balance preserving pioneer species alongside the rarest plants. Olive trees thus rub shoulders with species of dis- tant origins.