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Swamps transformed

by an architect

Port Grimaud spreads over an area that was once made up of marshland and the alluvial plain of La Giscle. At the time, this area was only used for farming and hunting. The development of tourism on the coast only began in the 1960s.

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the father of Port Grimaud

The architect François Spoerry

It is now fifty years since planning permission was given to build Port Grimaud. Who was the designer? A visionary architect from the Alsace region, who dreamt up this modern-day, lakeside city.

François Spoerry was a fan of gentle architect; that is to say he was opposed to the large, regular-shaped, rectilinear structures that were popular at that time.

And so Port-Grimaud was born with its wonderful sense of space and mid-rise buildings, redolent of Provence, in keeping with the existing, surrounding buildings.

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Avant-garde architecture

Once he had decided that, he imagined a village where the land and the sea would meet. He chose traditional architecture which he found more “gentle” than other big property development projects of the period. He proposed typical Provençal style houses to which he added other Mediterranean influences.