Laurent Kronental
Photographic perspectives
Cap d’Antibes, 1962
Claude Parent architect
A few years after commissioning a caretaker’s house from Claude Parent, André Bloc asked him to design a holiday home in the shape of a “bird’s nest” on a steep site in Cap d’Antibes. In keeping with the tradition of holiday villas on the Côte d’Azur, this project is the most accomplished example of the “cells on stilts” imagined by the architect.
The villa adopts a simple construction principle consisting of a load-bearing framework combining reinforced concrete, metal and glass. It comprises three levels: a workshop, an intermediate space and a living area, linked by an overhanging staircase with graphic white concrete volutes. The villa has been listed as a Historical Monument since 1990.
Laurent Kronental
Laurent Kronental was born in 1987. He lives and works in Paris. A self-taught photographer, he discovered photography in China during a stay of several months in Beijing. He was seduced by the big cities and the variety of their architecture, their inhabitants, the way they tame space and their personal stories. From 2011 to 2015, he produced his first artistic series, ‘Souvenir d’un Futur’, about elderly people living in large housing estates in the Paris region. His work raises questions about the condition of older people in these areas, and highlights a generation that is sometimes neglected. It offers a different perspective on these often underestimated suburbs, whose walls seem to be slowly ageing, taking with them the memory of a modernist utopia.
