La Grande Motte.
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ARCHITECTURE La Grande Motte
July 2026

Architecture: Jean Balladur

At 38 degrees, where else would you rather be - they call it the ‘city of sands’ - La Grande-Motte was conceived as a utopian vision of seaside living for the masses: a green oasis built from into the sand dunes near Montpellier. When the town was built, 36,000 trees were planted. Today, the trees keep it around 4°C cooler than many of the region’s scorching traditional old towns.

Designed by architect Jean Balladur in the late 1960s and 1970s, La Grande-Motte is a built expression of his humanist ideals. He had studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris and described the project as an attempt to „rebuild the Lost Paradise.“

„I was trying to create a happy setting, free from both present and past. I embraced heresy. La Grande-Motte is, in a way, a sacred place. Men and women come here to worship the sun.“