At sunrise, a splendid sky, pink with the autumnal light of the Côte d'Azur, flows delicately through the bay windows of the “Renzo” and its white metal facade. The new building, 62 m high and 125 m long, named in homage to its creator, the Italian architect Renzo Piano, seems to float on its spectacular stilts. Its sides are suspended in the void. Surrounded by basins and a marina where some splendid boats sleep, the spectacular building is the symbol in itself of the new “Mareterra” district built on the sea to the east of Monaco, after titanic works… not even interrupted by the Covid-19 health crisis. And which could make the craziest projects in Dubai, until now champion of pharaonic constructions, green with envy.
Inaugurated this Wednesday by Prince Albert II in front of 200 hand-picked guests, six months ahead of the initial schedule, the six-hectare site is making the small principality of 2 km2 grow by 3%. “The equivalent of a department for France” jokes Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, managing director of Anse du Portier, promoter of this extraordinary achievement.
Greenery
In the kingdom of excess, the new site created, among others, by the Valode et Pistre Architectes firm, which notably includes 110 apartments, ten villas completely hidden from the eyes of ordinary mortals, four town houses, a small port and shops , shakes up real estate records. The price of accommodation in the area would indeed be the most expensive in the world, the Financial Times recently wrote. If talking about money is a taboo on site and only receives an embarrassed silence in response, several sources tend to confirm that the price per square meter would indeed have reached 100,000 euros m2, or even 120 to 150,000. Not enough to dampen enthusiasm: the vast majority of properties, if not all, would already be sold even if no owner has yet set up shop on site. Some would even have bought a property as soon as the project was launched to resell it immediately and make a juicy capital gain.
While surveying the neighborhood, orderly, airy, far from the dense and heterogeneous urbanization which has sometimes been the signature of Monaco in recent decades, one thing is striking: the minerality of the long seaside Promenade, in light stone, where a public meditation space bathed in rose quartz is accessible to visitors, alternating with generous Mediterranean greenery and a one-hectare park. “There are around 1,100 trees, some are already thirty to forty years old. They were acclimatized on special land not far away before being planted here,” explain the instigators of Mareterra. “It’s not decoration, nor a container garden,” explains Michel Desvigne, French star of landscaping, before revealing the top of a hill which will become, in all simplicity, “a perched clearing”. “The big challenge was to create fertile soil over 30,000 m2. This is very important in terms of climate,” he adds.
Back on the central square, a restored masterpiece by Alexander Calder, “The Four Spears” sits in the middle of a dark pool. It's hard to imagine that a few years ago, the sea was up to 50 m deep. It is also difficult to appreciate the technical and engineering prowess deployed. In particular, it was necessary to transport, by boat, eighteen concrete boxes, equivalent to seven-eight-story buildings, to constitute the Mareterra belt. Once these giant blocks were placed, the fish were caught by associations in the region and the water was emptied to fill with sand, form the ground, insert a thousand piles, and make the slabs. Simple on paper. And a headache for builders forced to take into account seismic hazards and reassemble constructions in order to anticipate the inevitable rise in sea levels linked to global warming.
“We are aware that the seas are going badly and that we must protect them”
But behind the window, as tempting and inaccessible as it may be, is this massive intrusion of concrete and humans into the Mediterranean really reasonable at a time when the planet is burning? Associations had fought against it at the start of the project. They dropped the matter. “Marine biodiversity has been massacred. We cannot compensate for 60,000 m² of shallow waters which have been covered,” a researcher recently indicated in the journal Liberation.
In the principality, stuck by a cramped territory and its development needs “and which could not invade Italy or France”, jokes the promoter, we are staunchly assured that everything has been done like never before on such an achievement. “It was a demand from the Prince. He had refused a previous extension which did not meet environmental criteria,” assures the promoter. “We are aware that the seas are in bad shape and that we must protect them. We had to deploy treasures of ingenuity even if there is no perfect solution,” argues Céline Caron Dagioni, Minister of Equipment, Environment and Urban Planning. Concretely, scientists, scientific experts, marine biologists and divers were mobilized throughout the work. 500 m2 of Posidonia were transplanted, surveys carried out regularly as well as preventive protection measures for the neighboring Larvotto and Spélugues marine reserves. Corridors and habitats for fish are created. The fronts of the XXL boxes have been grooved by hand so that life clings to them. Analyzes will be carried out regularly for long-term monitoring, we promise.
Mareterra, which claims to be a model of eco-design, is also a matter of business and economic development. The total bill amounts to 2 billion euros entirely financed by private funds, in particular from Monegasque families like the Pastors, Brianti and Casiraghi. By launching this operation, the State “benefits from 20% real estate VAT on all property sales, a balance paid by the developer and registration fees on sales” as well as new public facilities such as an extension of its congress and exhibition center, the Forum Grimaldi, a new car park and increased tourist attractiveness.
If this is the eighth time in its history that Monaco has pushed back its borders by annexing a piece of the Mediterranean, it will probably be the last, the sovereign suggested on Wednesday during a brief speech before cutting the ribbon with his wife. Princess Charlene and her children Jacques and Gabriella. Particularly because of the presence of highly protected natural sites and because the means to be implemented cannot be easily reproduced. “Between Fontvielle (editor’s note: a previous extension at sea in the 1970s) and Mareterra,” says Guy-Thomas Levy-Soussan, “there is a technological leap equivalent to that between a landline telephone and an iPhone 15.” At this price – there, there is no need for frying on the line.
