Saturday 29 September 2012

Overlooked

These houses in Loches are overlooked by the Louis XI Tower on the citadel. The owners should be proud of how attractively they have maintained the properties. You can see how dry it's been from the state of their lawns. The photo was taken on 23 September, just before this current round of stormy weather. I like what they've done with the huge glass opening in the big house. Very stylish and must improve the interior of the house considerably. Mind you, they (or their architect) must have an extremely good relationship with Batiment de France to have been allowed to create such a non-traditional feature - even if it can only be seen when you are on top of the tower.

Susan

3 comments:

Tim said...

Susan, Pauline and I thought the very same thing about Batiment de France the first time we saw this... it is a lovely house and I feel fits in without any problem... but did they just do the 'French' authority thing and just did it!
Somehow, though, I don't think so... surely it has got to be visible from the road on the right.

Oh... to celebrate our wedding anniversary yesterday, we had that bottle of Chateau Gaudrelle Millesime sparkly that you gave me for my birthday... it was lovely... very complex, lots of background tannins... thank you both very much.

the fly in the web said...

That wonderful glass feature makes me wild!
I wanted to restore a sixteenth century place where the roof had fallen in...on the front, visible, tiles...on the back, facing other back gardens, I wanted a stylish greenhouse roof.
I checked...there was one similar on a recently opened museum and plenty more glass roofs of various designs in the town.
Batiments de France refused as
'someone passing in a helicopter could see it'.

Susan said...

Fly: You need to really work on your relationship with the BdF architect, butter them up, defer to their authority where you can and pick your battles. I suspect they like to be consulted at every step (including prior to your application) and shown drawings (not computer generated). It's a game in some ways, but once you have them on your side they can be fantastically helpful. If they decide you are a foreigner with no feel for French architecture, you will just get the formulaic answer. I am not looking forward to the time when we have to involve them, as we want to do at least one thing that I know they will balk at.

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