High-end renovation in Saint-Tropez

Here, any modification of the external appearance is subject to a prior formality with the administration, and that requirement is not confined to an old-town perimeter: it bears on the whole communal territory. A full renovation therefore cannot proceed by successive discoveries. Whatever will be seen from outside — tones, joinery, roofs, ironwork, openings created or made good — is decided at survey, before the first item is taken down. We draw up that survey as a programme document, not as a simple schedule of condition.

A local rule further governs every envelope renovation: on a lime render coloured through the mass, a local repair shows. The finishing of such a work is reasoned by whole façade panel, not by touch-up. That is a programme decision — it changes the extent of the works, the scaffolding and the way they are phased. Taken at survey, it is mastered; discovered at the end of the work, it is endured. We set the first down in writing, and we hold to it.

The citadel commands the town from its summit position and brings with it a protection regime over its setting. It is a pre-Vauban work: begun in 1583, partly destroyed, then rebuilt at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its keep has been classified as a historic monument since 12 December 1921, the enceinte since 4 July 1995, and the glacis of the counterscarp registered since 23 August 1990. Three instruments, three dates, one and the same high point.

That high point changes how a renovation is run in the town. A house is seen from above as much as from the street: the roof, the chimney stacks, the terraces and whatever is set on them count as much as an elevation. We therefore survey the roofs before the façades, and we fix the position of technical equipment at the moment the approach is settled — not on the day it arrives. A fifth elevation is being drawn; it is not improvised.

The representatives of the building trades have undertaken, in this commune, to dismantle every crane from 14 July to 31 August and to halt works over that same period. It is not a municipal order: it is a commitment given by the profession, and it is honoured. For a renovation carried through end to end the consequence is structuring — the work is cut in two, and the cut falls in the middle of the fine season, precisely when a house is made to be lived in.

We therefore programme two campaigns, and we define the state to be reached before the interruption: building closed and roofed, sensitive works protected, nothing left that must stay open through the summer. What the resumption finds in September was decided in the spring. Turyk Volodymyr runs the whole in spite of the distance. According to scale, this renovation calls on our other crafts: structural and general building work, bespoke finishes and interiors, extensions and fit-outs. The area-served page devoted to Saint-Tropez brings these four crafts together.