Jacques Labro died on November 11, 2024, in Paris. He was 89 years old. The name of this architect will remain attached to what was the great affair of his life, the development of the ski resort of Avoriaz (Haute-Savoie), with its buildings with wooden facades and unstructured silhouettes whose reliefs follow the forms of nature.
The adventure began at the beginning of the 1960s, when he was still a young, trendy architect, freshly graduated from the Beaux-Arts and crowned with the prestige of the Prix de Rome (1961). Jean Vuarnet, ski champion, inventor of the egg position (bent bust, bent legs, both arms pulled forward, fists together) and future creator of glacier glasses, was at the head of develop above Morzine, the town where he grew up, a new type of station, without cars, modeled on those he had discovered in the United States.
He convinced Gérard Brémond, a young entrepreneur with broad ideas, to follow him in this project. It was he who came to look for Jacques Labro, who was quickly joined by two accomplices who shared his taste for cinema, jazz and his love of the mountains: Jean-Jacques Orzoni and Jean-Marc Roques. Together, the three architects would found the Avoriaz Architecture Workshop (today directed by Simon Cloutier, who claims their heritage), and give shape to what would become the first Pierre & Vacances village.
Price of the silver square
The mountain is then booming. Everywhere, stations are developing on a functionalist model, typical of the time: standardized housing units, concrete everywhere, a spatial organization entirely designed around the car, with a view to what was then conceived as efficiency. maximum.
Avoriaz is one of the rare exceptions to this “ski factory” model, just like Les Arcs, whose architecture was entrusted to Charlotte Perriand, or Flaine, where Marcel Breuer was called upon. The large Portes du Soleil ski area, which this new resort would make accessible, was its capital, but its influence, the place it occupies today in the collective imagination, owes everything to the ambition which led to its design.
Crowned in 1968 with the Prix de l’équerre d’argent (awarded specifically to the Hôtel des Dromonts and two other buildings in the eponymous district, the historic heart of the resort), the architecture of Labro, Orzoni and Roques forged the visual identity of the Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival, which was held there for twenty years, from 1973 to 1993, before migrating to Gérardmer (Vosges). It will contribute to the ski resort being labeled “remarkable heritage of the 20th century”.e century “.
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