The face of ski resorts is changing over the decades. This is a trip around the architectural evolution of the resorts.

First there were the so-called 1st generation villages ...

La Clusaz was once ancestral and rural mountain villages become winter sports resort in the first third of the twentieth century. Among them, Megève, Morzine, Les Gets, La Clusaz, Val d'Isere, Serre-Chevalier ...

These villages of first generation managed to keep a traditional face by preserving and / or reproducing and modernizing the classic habitats.

They also retain evidence of the habitat-tool farmers of the late nineteenth century. At that time the habitat was not just a house, it was also and above all a working tool; men and animals coexisted there in a total promiscuity. The attic, a small building of some meter-square independent of the house that could be threatened by fire, served as a safe and contained the family property.

These rural villages have gradually changed their face with tourism, which, before being linked to winter sports, was often summer. Vestige of these times, the opening in the 1920s of large hotels whose architecture has nothing to do with the local architecture, but which rather characterizes the hotels spas that are Evian, Aix-les-Bains or Biarritz!

Integrated resorts and the rise of "modern" chalets

With the rise of winter sports are born the integrated stations of 2nd generation. They were created from scratch on the alpine pastures before and after the war, such as Alpe d'Huez, Courchevel, or Les 2 Alpes. They are concomitant with the rise of modern cottages that ensure the transition between traditional farm and residential cottage. The architect René Faublée, who opened his practice in Morzine in 1942, is a student of Le Même, architect megevan, they will have a great influence. With its so-called "modern" chalets combining mountain and urban tradition Faublée imposes its style that has little to do with the local style but, as any miscegenation, has enriched. These constructions of modest and refined design, dedicated to the resort of the skiers, are functional with a ski room, a stay provided with big picture windows opened towards the mountain, rooms under the roofs and multiple tidying up. Stone and dark wood embellished with bright colors on the shutters and doors, use of flat roof terraces or a single pan are the marks of Faublée influenced by the architectural current of the time. In addition to the exterior architecture, they take into account furnishing and interior decoration, Faublée attaching to a global design of the dwellings.

One-pan roofs and triangular structures, the Faublée leg

If other craftsmen-builders built large chalets between the 30s and 50s, one-paned roofs and triangular structures remain the true trademark of Faublée whether for individual chalets or for the construction of public buildings. The triangular plane sat his style. The evacuation of the snow seems to explain this geometrical bias. This same logic is applied to the roof to a pan oriented north, a geometry popularized after the 50s by many designers Savoyard.

The chalets with wood siding, a jewel of tradition and respect for the environment

In the purest tradition of mountain constructions, you can not miss out those wood siding chalets. Their inimitable style is recognized worldwide for its integration with alpine landscapes and its robustness. Audacious and tradition-friendly companies are renewing the construction of these architectural jewels, like MGM French Properties, which offers property for sale in the French Alps. Brand new, these buildings seem to have always been present in the resorts of Chamonix, Saisies or Valmorel. The latter are a tribute to French ancestral know-how while improving insulation techniques for ever lower energy consumption and environmental impact.

3rd generation stations, architectural experiments

The growing success of winter sports in the 50s pushed elected officials to think about new possibilities for skiing at altitude. Then came the 3rd generation functional stations that grew out of the air above 1800m at the end of the 60s and early 70s, the golden age of skiing: Flaine, Les Ménuires, Les Arcs, Plagne Bellecote, Avoriaz, Tignes Val Claret and Val Thorens, all have architectural singularities.

The challenge of Avoriaz

Jean Vuarnet, Olympic medalist of the J.O. Squaw Valley, wants to make "a small Savoyard Colorado" and gives the impetus to get Avoriaz out of the ground. The Parisian developer Robert Brémond has carte blanche to build the 80 hectares of the Avoriaz plateau and contacts architect Jacques Labro, who is teaming up with Jean-Jacques Orzoni and Jean-Marc Roques; "Avoriaz Architecture Workshop" will pilot the first realizations, the construction starts in 1965. The site will guide the possibilities of developments, developments which are not regulated by any regulation of volume, height or density, but only by the innovative ideas of car-free resort dear to Jean Vuarnet and of "urban ski" putting the ski in the center of the station, a new concept. Successful bet with the feeling of an architectural unity; everything is alike, but nothing is the same. The "mimetic" station blends into the landscape with an architecture that completely avoids the "chalet" style, except for the choice of wood for the buildings of the resort. The achievements of Jacques Labro have earned Avoriaz obtaining the label of Great achievement of Heritage twentieth century.

Flaine, a Bauhaus architecture

In Flaine, no wood: so that its buildings fit into the mineral landscape, the bias was to leave them rough concrete. With 3 buildings classified as historical monument, the pedestrian station, created in 1968 by the geophysicist Éric Boissonnas in the heart of a natural circus with its Bauhaus style architecture does not leave indifferent. It is a real architectural work, such as an open-air museum also offering monumental sculptures of Dubuffet, Picasso and Vasarely with regard to holidaymakers. An innovative architecture, not always understood ... as in Les Ménuires ...

Les Ménuires, 50 years of architectural evolutions

In Les Menuires, each "new" district of the station born in 1965 bears in him the testimony of the architectural fashion of the time where it was built! To make the most of the ski enjoy the idea of departure was to rationalize so that vacationers save time: shopping mall for shopping in slippers, studio cabins accessible to low wages, in short maximum functionality. These specifications also applied to Flaine, Isola 2000, La Plagne, Les Arcs ... and at Les Menuires, there was first the concrete, the rectangular bars, the sober and clean lines of the Croisette, then 1972 "Brelin", historic liner with 640 co-owners, followed by the district of Preyerand. 30 years after its birth, the architectural choices of the beginning being decried, two buildings are destroyed, "Le Solaret" and "Les Clarines", to the benefit of accommodation integrating elements of comfort such as swimming pool, sauna, hammam or institutes of care. Then the districts of Fontanettes, Bruyères and Reberty 1850 are born with more traditional constructions: residences limited to 6 floors, integrating the stone, the wood, the slate and the roofs with slopes. At 40, his architectural heritage becomes a pride: his bell tower receives the first prize for metal architecture in 2000 and "Brelin" is even awarded the Heritage label "Architecture of the twentieth century" in 2012, a label that Flaine also received.