Camouflaging of a pinned retaining wall with fake rocks.
Within the context of a real estate construction at the top of Meribel, AAB company was in charge of constructing a fake concrete rock wall alongside the length of an impressive hotel-chalet:
like a cliff retaining the mountain, the installation of this artificial rock facade, was actually there to hide a thick concrete wall pinned with stakes, which was used to reinforce the natural wall.
In this fault-line which opened towards the sky, evoking the local geology, my role consisted of sculpting these boulders, the building of the metal structure, the putting in place and the molding of the concrete.
For this project, the main constraints had us find a solution in order to erect a scaffolding in this pit almost 10 meters deep even with the absence of a stable surface below, but also to know how to adapt to different weather conditions unique to the mountain and not always compatible with projected concrete.
I had to leave for another construction site without being able to complete the project, but even without me, another sculptor was able to work on what was left.
A series of videos capture my work. You can find them here.
Not long ago, I was interviewed at the Gare de Nantes by a local journalist. The journalist asked me how to best describe my contribution to the concrete tree sculpture; as an artist or an artisan? Normally, this type of question would have left me speechless, had I not thankfully prepared a very polite, very vague answer:
“we are a bit of both”