Structural and general building work in Beaulieu-sur-Mer

From its calling as a winter resort the commune inherited a Belle Époque built ensemble — villégiature villas, hotels, leisure buildings. The Villa Kérylos, built between 1902 and 1908 by Emmanuel-Elisée Pontremoli for Théodore Reinach, has been classified as a historic monument since 15 September 1966; it gives the measure of the standard to which people built here. That fabric combines two factors which have to be addressed together: the age of the works, often a century old, and permanent salt exposure on a seafront with no screen.

The communal territory is one of the smallest on the Riviera coast, wedged between the cliff and the sea. The built fabric is tight and available plots are rare. Underpinning is therefore carried out within a constrained setting, without the standing-back room or the clearances a large peninsula property affords. The commune also falls within seismic zone 4 under decree no. 2010-1255, and that classification bears directly on any structural intervention or any added storey.

The commune is crossed by the Basse Corniche and by the coastal railway line: access to plots is organised between these two infrastructures, on a narrow band of ground. In the centre and around the harbour the fabric is tight to the point where site parking and occupation of the highway become, in practice, the first constraint to settle — before the structural calculation, before the choice of lifting plant. Two harbours, Fourmis and Plaisance, shape the seafront and the heritage protections attached to it.

As a coastal commune, Beaulieu-sur-Mer comes under the hundred-metre strip and the regime governing areas close to the shore, both of which condition any extension of footprint on the sea side. We settle these points at the survey, not during the work: on a plot of this size a constraint discovered late cannot be absorbed by adapting the method — it changes the project.

The bay of Beaulieu is one of the best sheltered on the Riviera coast, and the La Petite Afrique quarter owes its name to the particularly mild microclimate the cliff screen affords it. That shelter from the wind removes nothing of the salt deposition: the built part of the commune lies entirely within five hundred metres of the shore, and so entirely in a marine atmosphere within the meaning of ISO 9223. Reinforcement steel, fixings and metalwork are treated accordingly, the A4 / 316L molybdenum grade holding up markedly better than A2 / 304.

Making the structure good, here, is what makes everything else possible: a complete renovation putting services and comfort back behind a preserved elevation, bespoke finishes and interiors recovering the decorative register of the local villégiature, an extension or an outdoor fit-out that holds to the scale of a rare plot. It is the first of our crafts in Beaulieu-sur-Mer because it is the one the other three depend on.