Architecture de Collection welcomes you to the Atlantic Coast

From the shores of the Arcachon Basin to the cliffs of the Basque Coast, a single spirit runs through Southwest architecture: a modernity rooted in light, sand, and wind.

Architecture de Collection is now opening a new chapter in its development in this unique region, entrusting its representation to Achille Penciolelli, a dedicated expert in the preservation of modern and contemporary heritage.

Active in Bordeaux, the Arcachon Basin, and the Basque Coast, Achille embodies a mobile and transversal approach, where remarkable architecture reveals itself in the folds and contours of the territory.

The coastline of Southwest France has been, throughout the 20th century, a fertile ground for architectural experimentation. The Basque Country stands out as a laboratory for modern housing, from the Belle Époque to the Art Deco villas of the 1920s, a fruitful marriage of resort culture and avant-garde artistic movements. Further north, Royan became a symbol of post-war Reconstruction, while a generation of visionary architects emerged between dunes and forests: Salier, Courtois, Lajus, Sadirac, as well as J.R. Hébrard and many others, adapting the principles of international modernism to the local climate, materials, and coastal lifestyle. Far from the cold, “disembodied” abstraction of some European models, their houses reinvented modernity on a human scale: light structures, open floor plans, flat roofs, and a seamless flow between interior and exterior spaces.

Between Bordeaux and Cap Ferret, in the Landes, and as far as Biarritz, a “measured and quiet architecture” developed, neither ostentatious nor picturesque, but rooted, gentle, and remarkably precise. These homes extend the movement of the dunes, capture the light, and frame the landscape without ever imposing on it.

While the influence of modern masters such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright—is evident, the Bordeaux School offers a local, vernacular, and climate-sensitive reinterpretation. Like the Farnsworth House or the Case Study Houses, the villas of the Arcachon Basin and the Basque Coast explore the relationship between structure and nature. Here, however, concrete gives way to wood, standardization to the craftsman’s hand, and the ‘machine for living’ to the living home. Architecture becomes an art of balance, of breath and light, where every opening is conceived as a frame for the landscape.

With the launch of the Atlantic Coast sector, Architecture de Collection reaffirms its commitment to bringing greater visibility to 20th-century architecture, still too often overlooked, to preserving locally built works, and to sharing their value with a wider audience, whether collectors or simply passionate admirers.