Perched atop a green hillside laced with ancient olive trees and palms overlooking the Côte d’Azur, a compound in Ramatuelle instills a modern sensibility into the traditional vernacular of the St.-Tropez region.
The man responsible for this getaway from the Paris summer heat is the New York architect Peter Marino, who over a nearly 50-year practice has changed the face of French luxury with his boutiques for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Chanel. Residential design has been central to his work from the beginning—most notably his renovation of Andy Warhol and Jed Johnson’s townhouse on East 66th Street in New York City—but it has never been captured in a single volume until now. This month Peter Marino: Ten Modern Houses (published by Phaidon), from which this excerpt is adapted, highlights singular expressions from the last decade of what Marino calls “the art of habitation.”
Click to Tour the House
In Ramatuelle that means a residence in stacked fieldstone and bands of blond stucco, completed in 2023, framing breathtaking views. One enters the house via large cast bronze doors, passing into a wedge-shaped, double-height entry gallery packed with large-scale artworks. Light floods virtually every interior area, thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows, edged in bronze, that open on the home’s heart: its rear yard. Deep soffits, tilting forward like the prow of a ship and embedded with plants, provide shade. The living room, which steps down into two parts, is accentuated by a daringly curved stainless steel fireplace.
A bronze-clad spiral stair, its rail covered in hand-stitched leather, leads down to a disco marked by multicolored light columns and art inspired by retro technology, such as old cassettes. Second-floor bedrooms also have floor-to-ceiling windows. To the east and west, their balconies wrap around curved corners to become extra large terraces protected by generous canopies supported by V-shaped struts. The rear yard is centered on a curving pool—its custom ceramic tiles forming waves of green and blue—set within stepped terraces layered with greenery, stone, and trees.
A western terrace contains an outdoor kitchen, a dining terrace, a lounge area, and a custom tile bar floored with irregularly shaped terrazzo and shaded by translucent tensile structures. Down from the pool area is a fitness center dug into the hillside with walls of glass and deep, landscaped overhangs. Slightly downhill is a guesthouse, a loosely L-shaped structure opening to views of the Mediterranean, shielded by canopies and enveloped in dense foliage. Its green roof is composed of succulents and gravel, and it picks up on the pool’s wave shapes. It’s an ambitious scope of functions that flows seamlessly and elegantly. And, thanks to its airy feel, gracious details, and sense of grounded simplicity, it’s a home that feels just right in this quiet corner of the world—far enough from Paris to tune out the din, so you can hear the music drifting over from Le Club 55.
Adapted from Peter Marino: Ten Modern Houses, © Phaidon, 2024
This story appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Town & Country, with the headline "Le Weekend." SUBSCRIBE NOW
