Inhabit : Occupy, live or inhabit a place
In 2018 Anne & Jerôme fell in love with this wonderful place that they found uninhabited in a secret location in Biarritz (Pays Basque). The villa, built between 1927 and 1931 by Louis Amédée Aragón, was abandoned for almost 80 years. It had only been inhabited between 1931 and 1936 by Gonzalo de Mora y Fernández and his wife Blanca de Aragón y Carrillos de Albornoz, parents of queen Fabiola of Belgium and close friends of tailor Cristóbal Balenciaga.
There are certainly many ways in which such a place can be brought back to life after almost a century of being left alone; many ways in which its planes and curves and angles can begin to wake up, stretch out, breathe deep, and interact again with human presence; many ways in which such a place can begin once again to shape the lives of people, and let them mold it, in return. What does it mean to honor a home? What does it mean to celebrate a construction meant as a sumptuous shelter -and then left uncared for? What does it mean to inhabit it?
Along with Anne & Jerôme, Ondarreta shares the magic of this extraordinary place inviting us to reflect upon the meaning of spaces and their condition of being occupied or inhabited and questioning the value of the relationship they share with objects, furniture, people and nature.
Such generous space could have been refurbished, reshaped to contemporary aesthetics, redressed with new, polished, immaculate objects for visitors to contemplate. It could have been stripped to its walls and made new, in a way. However, the French couple perceived that, in this mysterious edifice, something was dormant behind the walls. An identity of sorts, a personality: the house’s being. And they chose to listen up, to observe, to wait for this essence to be revealed. Then they inhabited it but in a way determined by the interaction between the shelter and the sheltered, rather than an imposition of one on the other.
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard states that “the house is one of the greatest powers of integration of thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind. When arriving at this bed & breakfast one feels like entering a dreamlike world, magic, mysterious, secluded, enclosed by nature and by the magic of other times. In it come together, past (memories of the house’s previous life), present (thoughts inspired by such a setting) and future (dreams of unseen places, projects and times).
Wall-paper from the turn of the century backs up a contemporary design bench upholstered with Harris tweed, which holds the United Kingdom’s oldest certification mark. Fresh flowers picked from the garden decorate the breakfast table every morning along with bread made in an ancient oven that is part of the original appliances of the house. A marble statue and a donkey look out at a group of contemporary dancers performing bare feet on the moist grass.
According to Le Corbusier, the real meaning of inhabiting lies in the relationship between natural elements (such as the sun and vegetation), architecture and human values. He “conceived a form of architecture that recognizes a symphony between man and ground, architecture and nature, grandeur and splendor, safekeeping the place, its historic values and the enhancing of each place’s characteristic beauty.” In creating a balance between the triad of the home -architecture, people, nature-, Anne and Jerôme have found the perfect way to inhabit this house. As the saying goes, they have brought with them their lares, those roman deities that represent ancestors, the domestic and the hearth, and have found a joyful, carefree way for them and their guests to inhabit their house.
Maison, pan de prairie, ô lumière du soir
Soudain vous acquérez presque une face humane
Vous êtes près de nous, embrassant, embrassés.
(House, patch of meadow, oh evening light
Suddenly you acquire an almost human face
You are very near us, embracing and embraced.)
