The two bars where the inhabitants of Pesmes had their customs, where they mingled, in summer, with the lurking tourists, closed this year. One of them could reopen in September but, for now, we have to make do with the makeshift bars that the few shops that liven up this medieval village built on the hillside, just above its windows, have set up along a river that meanders pleasantly to the Saône. Pesmes may be ranked among the most beautiful villages in France, but it has not escaped the wave of depopulation that is affecting the old centres throughout the territory.
This is where the architect Bernard Quirot, born in 1959 in Dole (Jura), grew up. This is where he lives and works today. After a long journey that took him from Paris, where he spent twenty-five years, to Besançon, via the Villa Medici in Rome, he opened his agency there in 2008 and has been working with it ever since to revitalise the village. In addition to projects such as the health centre in Vézelay (Yonne), which won him the Équerre d’Argent prize in 2015, or this winery, the construction of which he is currently supervising in Pauillac, in the Gironde, for Château Lafite Rothschild, he has renovated, with his agency BQ+A, numerous houses in Pesmes, as well as the school, for which he also designed an annex.
If the revitalisation of the old towns is a battle, then Bernard Quirot is a brave artillery colonel. Aware in this case that architecture is the sinews of war, he created an association, aptly named “Avenir radieux”, to spread his culture in the village. He offers free advice to those wishing to renovate their houses and organises, every summer, an architecture seminar where a series of cultural and festive events flourish while about twenty students reflect on the future of the village. Housed with locals, they have two weeks to design a project based on one of the situations that the organisers of the seminar identify year after year for their transformative potential.
Self-build site
This year, for example, there was a ruined house, wedged between two others that are still standing. How to bring light in? How to offer it an outdoor space? How to create inspiring views? There was also a barn, currently relatively uninhabitable but with the potential to become one. And this abandoned farmhouse that sits on the large square in front of the school and the town hall, couldn’t there be a way to turn it into a municipal bar? And while we’re at it, could we connect the building with the walled garden towards which it points and with the grandiose perspective it reveals on the landscape? By perforating the facades, we could deepen the depth of field, bring the whole square into the small dark street that runs behind it and, conversely, make visible, from the square, the magnificently sculpted stone mantle that turns it into matter.
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