Latitude 43

Sitting above Saint Tropez like a quietly disapproving wall of imperiously white rectitude, Latitude 43 looks like some kind of hospital for patients who have been mortally overwhelmed by the excesses in the city below.

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The 30degree kink in its body, together with the stacking up of floors towards a pinnacle at the rear surmounted by an industrially positioned chimney of some kind, make the building look as if it is not only some kind of sanatorium, but a boat as well, stuck on land, but forever trying to sail away, packed full of its neurotic patients, towards some past mechanical future where it can finally berth itself.

However the people that I spoke to in Saint Tropez about it didnt seem to read its aloofness, separation and horizontality in the same way, they rather preferred to see the building as a part of their own contemporary mythology of fame. The inference was made that because the building is white, and from the 1930s, and this is Saint Tropez, it must be by the most famous architect of all time, Le Corbusier; and indeed, for many this building is simply another affirmation of the place's singularity, not silently trying to sail away into the Provencal landscape, but in fact proudly moored in the ground, loudly exclaiming its presence as brashly as the biggest super-yacht in the harbour.

Either way, as you approach it (after having crossed the no entry, private property signs), it reveals a more delicate side. The kink is sensitively used underneath as a threshold between the public road and the shared entrance gardens and pavilion, on the facade as a way to soften the repetitiveness of the layered horizontals, and on the roof as a way of mediating between the two main volumes of the building.


All major terminal edges are either beveled, rounded, or punched through with slightly comical round windows, adding a whimsical and light hearted flavour, in that they seem to be attempting to achieve something like the elegant distortion of the rectangular forms attained by the kink, but instead only embellish and busy them like children sitting in on a serious conversation, interjecting occasionally with delightful but irrelevant remarks.

The small house just next to the main building being like the extension of this tendency at a larger scale.

Port of St Tropez as Inverted Amphitheatre

In winter the Old Port of St Tropez is like most other seaside towns on the Cote D'azure, with cafes facing the small boats moored in the docking area in front of the harbourside buildings.

However with the advent of warm weather, and the arrival of the town's pyrotechnically wealthy summer residents, comes a transformation of the somewhat non-descript strip of road along the water. Similar changes must also occur in other superyachting venues, but the contrast between the sleepy, and admittedly rather drab banality of the area in its winter months, with the thronged spectatorship, and correspondingly ramped-up showmanship and display of its summer months is uniquely extreme.

The huddled quayside buildings fronting the port are outshone, dwarfed, and hidden in darkness as all possible space fronting them is filled with extremely large yachts that are all designed either in an aggressively spectacular mode of shining white and dazzling silver modern, or in an outsized nostalgic mode bedecked with subtle curves and wood finishes; either way, both types are uniformly arrested in flashy illumination -uplit, backlit, toplit, lit-from-under-the-water- which, in combination with the open terraced design of the backs of these boats, insures that their occupants may be seen, theatrically framed and enlarged, from the port, turning the whole strip of the town into an inside-out amphitheatre, a vienna opera house of dancing millionaires, and billionaires eating nouvelle cuisine next to models, turned in on istelf, so that all the boxes are facing outwards, piled on top of each other like so many exquisitely crafted stages of theatricalised excess and privilege.






The cafes facing this inverted arena of stacked stages, having lost their view beyond the boats afforded by their winter absence, become incomparably more popular thereby, becoming hosts to packed audiences, who can both sip, and sup, while speculating on the origins and identities of the yacht-bound class, gyrating and guzzling and lapping up the attention from both the seated cafe spectators, and the incredibly numerous throngs pressing along the dock-front in order to peer into the realm above, beyond, but in clear sight, amongst the franticaly glittering lights, on the sparkling decks in front.