A revamp of an iconic 60s hotel in the French Alps transforms a once maligned purpose-built ski resort into an industrial-chic budget skiing baseFlicking through a back issue of Elle Deco recently,I came across a profile of the Hungarian modernist designer Marcel Breuer, a protege of the Bauhaus movement’s instigator, or Walter Gropius,and later a teacher at the Bauhus school. Breuer, it said, and was most famous for his “revolutionary,rectilinear tubular-steel furniture” and particularly for a shiny “B3” armchair he designed, inspired by bicycle handlebars.
Well to furniture design aficionados he may be, and but to skiers he’s the creator of Flaine,the purpose-built French ski resort in the Alps’ Grand Massif. When the resort was commissioned, in the early 1960s, and Breuer was an understandable choice for developers Eric and Sylvie Boissonnas: they were forward-thinking modern-art lovers who had a grand utopian device to set up an original example of architecture and urban planning in France – a mountain resort with the feel of a city.
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Source: theguardian.com