Is planning permission required for an extension in Cannes?

The commune is coastal, including on the Lérins islands, and several sectors are covered by the surroundings of historic monuments — the Castre castle, the Fort Royal, buildings on the Croisette. Planning falls within the intercommunal framework of the Cannes Pays de Lérins agglomeration community.

Can a seafront property be extended in Cannes?

The strip of one hundred metres from the high-water mark cannot be built on outside urbanised areas, and the extension of urbanisation in areas close to the shore is controlled. The bay faces south and is widely open: sunlight and reflected glare are at their maximum on the built front.

Can a pool or a terrace be created in Cannes?

On the hills, the slope and the old retaining works of the villégiature properties are examined before any outdoor project. The hairpin hill lanes and the plot accesses set above or below the road govern, for their part, the choice of lifting means.

Expertise · Cannes

Extensions & villa fit-outs in Cannes

To enlarge without distorting, to elevate without betraying: every extension seems to have always been there. We bring this expertise to exceptional residences in Cannes, with the discretion and rigour for which we are known.

From La Californie to Croisette, we work at the finest addresses in Cannes — a limited number of sites, carried through to perfection.

Terraces over the bay, pool-houses, single-level extensions opening onto the garden: in Cannes, landscaping extends the art of entertaining. Infinity pools and summer kitchens are conceived with the landscape.

Every extension is drawn to embrace the villa and its view, from Palm Beach to Super Cannes, as though it had always been there.

Extending a villa in Cannes: three scales of city

The fabric of Cannes combines three distinct scales: the tight medieval tissue of the old town on its hill, the monumental front of the Croisette, and the isolated properties of the heights. It is on those heights that most enlargement projects are played out — La Californie and Super Cannes carry a fabric of villégiature villas inherited from the nineteenth-century winter clientele, completed by architect-designed villas of the twentieth. Each of those generations has its way of receiving a new volume, and none receives it as the previous one did.

On the hills, the gradient and the old retaining structures are the structural point to examine before any outdoor scheme: a terrace, an infinity pool, a summer kitchen bear on walls whose condition no one has surveyed for a long time. The bay faces south and is widely open, sunshine and glare are at their maximum on the built front; the heights, set back and higher up, largely escape the salt deposit that strikes the shore of the same commune. Two villas in Cannes do not call for the same metalwork.

Planning consent in Cannes: surroundings, coast, seismicity

The presence of protected historic monuments — the château de la Castre, the Fort Royal on the island of Sainte-Marguerite, buildings of the seafront — brings a regime protecting their surroundings across several sectors of the commune. Cannes belongs to the Cannes Pays de Lérins agglomeration community, the inter-communal framework of its urban planning. As a coastal commune it applies the hundred-metre strip and the regime governing areas close to the shore, including on the Lérins islands, which form part of the communal territory.

Cannes falls within seismic zone 3, moderate, under decree no. 2010-1255, and is expressly named there — whereas most communes of the Alpes-Maritimes fall within zone 4. This is no nicety of paperwork: the zone level commands the constructive provisions of a storey addition and of a load transfer. An extension is therefore sized here on a figure that is not that of the rest of the department.

Works: calendar, hairpins and delivery by sea

The Croisette and the centre are subject to a calendar of international events which structures the year and severely restricts the occupation of the roadway during those periods: a site in Cannes falls in with that calendar, or it falls in with nothing. Properties on the heights are served by hillside hairpin lanes of sustained gradient, with plot accesses often at a level difference from the road. Any intervention on the islands finally supposes delivery by sea of materials as of removals — a constraint no other commune in our territory knows.

On the seafront, front-line exposure imposes marine-class protective systems on all external metalwork and joinery; set back, the choice opens up. Structural and general building work states what the gradient and the retaining structures allow, high-end renovation brings the villa to the level of its extension, and bespoke finishes and interiors transpose the register of the grand hotels and villégiature villas — stucco and plasterwork, marble, ironwork, wrought joinery. Our crafts in Cannes are articulated in that way.