Page 278 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6
during a walk, and whose surfaces were unsuitable for large the ‘hybrid’ manner in which the building was constructed, but
gatherings. The use of the grande terrasse, as it was referred to in the nothing was preserved of the Genevan project as far as the gardens
minutes of the sio meetings, as an ‘outdoor salon’ for summer events, were concerned, and the landscaping instead retained many
was hindered by guests being channelled along the foothpaths characteristics of Bertolini and de La Harpe’s initial plan.
and by the amount of space taken up by flower beds, which was Ubi bene, ibi est patria: the title is apt for two reasons: the use of
probably why it was replaced by a simple lawn area, encroached Latin roots is in a ‘tradition’, and the reference to a ‘home’ – which
upon only by a paved semicircle, on the facade side, perfectly suited the project’s ambition allows to be envisaged as nothing less than
to the installation of a bandstand or barbecue. patrician – surfaces in the implicit aspects of many of the plans. The
architects made the most of this seemingly problematic area, where
THE PARK it was not possible to prolong a French-style garden extending
Ubi bene, ibi est patria. 8 along the building’s axis either eastwards or westwards, by creating
Attributed to cicero an English-style park. This solution presented a double advantage:
on the one hand it satisfied the romantic sensibilities of an era
In contrast, the first gardens of Beau-Rivage were vast, because enamoured with meandering footpaths and ‘mysterious’ thickets. On
although the building occupied a smaller surface area, it was the other, it imitated the work of time, which juxtaposes testimonies
preceded to the south by a gently sloping plot of land that stretched to different periods in the parks of numerous mansions. They sit
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almost to the lake, bounded by a quay with public right of way. This side by side like the assorted styles of the furniture within, where
narrow path, necessarily reserved for public pedestrian traffic, was the ‘Etruscan’ austerity of a Neoclassical suite comfortably cohabits
enlarged between 1896 and 1901, becoming the grand quai. 9 with the impetuous graces of a Louis xv boudoir… The interior
The planned hotel was the subject of a competition in which decor of Beau-Rivage would continue with this same ‘diachronic
nine architectural practices took part. The surviving plans of the stratification’ that can be found in ancient residences – a practice so
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three winning projects show the building set off by geometric widespread in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that it easily
gardens. These undeniably enhance the symmetry of the facade for went unnoticed. In this way both the holidaying patrician and the
which they form the prolongation more than the landscape parks member of the middle class could find something of the family
then in fashion, whose meandering lines coil around hotels built home, either real or imagined, in the hotel.
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high up or on hilly land that require a ‘picturesque’ treatment. The
calm expanse of the lakeside landscape and the regular, gently sloping The trees, the rocks,
terrain demanded a majestic style, a solemn meeting of nature and the waters and the flowers,
culture, reminiscent of the splendour of the ancien régime. These are your brushes, your canvases, your colours:
Despite having awarded the first prize to ‘Time is Money’, by Nature is yours; and the elements of all the world
the architect François Gindroz of Geneva, the board of directors Are available to your fertile, creative hand.
entrusted its execution to Achille de La Harpe and Jean-Baptiste delille
Bertolini, whose project entitled ‘Ubi bene, ibi est patria’ was judged Les Jardins, chant i
to be ‘equal’ to that of the prize-winner. The mandate of the
two Lausanne-born architects was thereafter understood to be a The project submitted for the competition, as evidenced
combination of their project and that of their colleague. This was by a sketch on tracing paper showing alterations and a dossier
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Jean-Baptiste Bertolini and Achille de La Harpe architects, General plan Hôtel Beau-Rivage and park seen from Château d’Ouchy.
of the section of land belonging to the Beau-Rivage adjacent to land belonging Albumin photograph, pre-1880.
to Longchamp, Indian ink and watercolour on paper, undated [1857].
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Fig. 7
consisting of a scale drawing and two sections, extended the arrangement, serving to emphasise the layout, the second attests
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building’s facade by adding a ground-floor terrace edged by a to the addition of young fir trees – or of conifers with the same
retaining wall topped with a platband; it was accessed by a central silhouette – scattered unevenly around the land. The choice of this
flight of steps from which the stairs branched off (fig. 2). Starting species derives from a sense of the picturesque, undoubtedly with
from the hotel wings, two slopes converged towards a circular the intention of evoking the ‘rustic’, ‘Alpine’ Switzerland conveyed
basin with a fountain that bisected a rectangular lawn laid out by the graphic arts, literature and opera, which would reach
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along the length of the quay. A change in the layout of the building, its culmination at the time of the Swiss national exhibition held
whose facade no longer ran parallel to the shore, was probably in Geneva in 1896. These same conifers fill the background of a
why the plans were altered to create a semi-landscaped garden that sketch in oils by François Bocion of the fountain to the east of the
preserved the axial arrangement, semicircular terrace and fountain, building, enabling them to be dated with absolute certainty, but
but jettisoned the geometry of the other elements in favour of a unfortunately with no great precision, to before 1890, the year in
freer layout, with curves and counter curves, the better to espouse which the painter died (fig. 11, p. 291). 16
the contours of an asymmetrical configuration. Two variations In 1902, the creation of the quay prompted the installation
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have survived, one of which is dated 29 December 1857, in other of a gate designed by Théophile Van Muyden. The openwork
words less than two months after the first drawing submitted to the device separated the hotel guests from the public out walking
jury (figs 3 and 4). In these two projects, it was the southern part while allowing each to see and be seen. It allowed the park to
of the garden that was to undergo the most extensive amendments; breathe and did not conceal anything of the landscape from it, but
it acted as a linking element between the slant of the shore and above all it confirmed the privilege of the people who had access
the features demanding symmetry dictated by the building. The to it by offering the view of their good fortune to all. The majesty
execution documented by the illustrations reveals a third solution – of the gate with its posts decorated with rams’ heads and topped
in many respects more elegant – which dispenses with the counter with Medici vases references the model of the patrician property.
curves and has the curved lines converging on a single point, on the This aristocratic allusion, which prevailed until the closing decades
opposite side from the front projection of the building, describing of the twentieth century, would long preserve the early gardens,
the figure of a shield with a heart-shaped inset (figs 5 and 6). seen as spaces more to be contemplated than used. The alterations,
more often than not minor, were essentially governed by aesthetic
ALTERATIONS notions. As regards historic substance, the emergence, and in fact
I say, a moving grove. the pre-eminence, of considerations of a different order would
shakespeare bring with it heavier losses.
Macbeth, act v, scene 5 The trees earned more deliberation than the composition of
the garden itself, as if, by virtue of being living things and not
Although the first photographs of the hotel show a marked- ‘conceptual’, they were closer to a nature assumed to be virginal
out garden still lying fallow, an examination of two engravings, and innocent, and meriting protection. In 1904, a ‘scheme for the
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which can be dated as being from 1865 and 1880 respectively planned enlargement of the Hôtel Beau-Rivage’ objected to the plans for
(judging by the apparel of the strollers dotted around the walks), an extension to the east of the building on the grounds that it was
enable us to follow the development of the planting scheme (figs ‘important […] to treat the park’s handsome plantations with care’. The
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7-9). While the first document shows an essentially symmetrical same consideration was shown in the 1970s, at the time of a survey
Beau-Rivage Palace, Ouchy-Lausanne, Hôtel Beau-Rivage seen from the lake. Albumin photograph, pre-1864.
the park seen from the south. Postcard c.1920.
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