Can a load-bearing wall be opened in Èze?

The village is built in tiers on the rock, in party-walled stone houses. The two dominant structural points are not the cross walls but earth pressure on the retaining structures and the stability of the vaults: that is where any diagnosis begins.

What consents are required for structural work in Èze?

The church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption has been listed as a historic monument since 5 December 1984; its surroundings regime covers a significant part of the village core. The lower part of the territory is coastal, and the commune falls within seismic zone 4.

How is a structural site supplied in Èze?

Èze-Village is entirely pedestrian: no vehicle circulates there. Everything goes up and down by the same lanes and stairs, no storage area exists near the works, and the phasing is set on split deliveries.

Expertise · Èze

Structural and general building work in Èze

Foundations, underpinning, stone masonry and structures: the invisible part of a project — the one that decides everything. We bring this expertise to exceptional residences in Èze, with the discretion and rigour for which we are known.

From Èze-Village to Èze-Bord-de-Mer, we work at the finest addresses in Èze — a limited number of sites, carried through to perfection.

In Èze, a perched village, structural work is a matter of stone and slope: terraced retaining walls, vault repairs, traditional lime masonry on sometimes medieval fabric. Every intervention consolidates without distorting.

Narrow access of Èze-Village, steeply sloping terrain towards Èze-Bord-de-Mer: our sites are supplied and conducted with workshop logistics and absolute respect for the listed landscape.

Masonry works in Èze: dry stone and earth pressure

The village fabric is made of party-walled stone houses, interlocked in tiers on the rock and served by calades and stairs. On a site stepped in this way, two structural points dominate everything else: earth pressure on the retaining walls and the condition of the vaults. Stone fabric in permanent contact with the rock and the ground also carries a risk of capillary rise at the base of walls. Consolidation therefore runs from the bottom upwards, and rarely in a single move.

The commune is tiered into three distinct entities — the hilltop village, the seafront and the col — separated by several hundred metres of level difference. This is no geographical detail: the shoreline, at the foot of the cliff and against the Basse Corniche, carries villégiature fabric of a quite different nature from that of the village. Two works within one commune call neither for the same foundations nor for the same logistics. Èze falls within seismic zone 4 under decree no. 2010-1255.

Consent and manual handling: the constraints of a site in the hilltop village

The church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, neoclassical and dating from the eighteenth century, is built on the foundations of a twelfth-century church; it has been classified as a historic monument since 5 December 1984. Its presence brings a protection regime for its surroundings covering a large part of the village core. On the lower part of the territory, the commune being coastal, the hundred-metre strip and the regime governing areas close to the shore apply. The cliffs of Èze are also among the features targeted by the landscape protection policy for the department’s eastern coast.

The village is entirely pedestrian: no vehicle circulates within it. Deliveries, removals and equipment go up and down the same lanes and the same stairs, by hand. No storage area is available in the immediate vicinity of the works, which requires sequencing to be built around fractioned deliveries. The village is, finally, a site of heavy footfall: public occupation of the walkways adds to the constraints of getting materials in. A site in the village has, in practice, nothing in common with a site on the shoreline of the same commune.

Materials and craft: dry stone, a work of its own

Stone masonry and dry-stone construction shape the built landscape: restanques, retaining walls, calades. The art of dry-stone walling has been inscribed since 28 November 2018 on the UNESCO representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. A restanque is a wall built without binder carrying a cultivated terrace: it regulates water as much as it retains earth, and rebuilding one has nothing to do with ordinary bedded masonry. It is a craft, not a recipe.

The hilltop village is exposed to wind on every face, with no relief screening it from above. Once the structure is sound, a complete renovation can reopen the volumes towards the Mediterranean, bespoke finishes and interiors can extend the raw material of the village, and an extension or a pool can be set on the slope without breaking the harmony of the site. Our crafts in Èze stand in that order because the rock imposes it.