The beginning of this year has been really busy with work and travelling, leaving little or no time for writing. This particularl post is about a recent trip to my home city of Dijon in Burgundy. Although I have been there numerous times since I got interested in Art Deco, I only recently discovered the Art Deco heritage of the city (including the door picture left that definitely looks like some in Shanghai), so I made a post about it (after Paris, Lyon, Boulogne, Reims & Vichy).
Being an important city since the medieval time, Dijon’s architecture is a mix of the various styles from roman churches and medieval wood houses to Hausmann-style late 19th century apartment buildings. There are a few really nice Art Nouveau buildings in the city center and little Art Deco, but it only takes a few hundred meters in the right direction to find much more of it. Montchapet district was built on a hill from the early 20th century, just away from the core city of them. The lower streets are more Art Nouveau, but the higher the street, the later the construction and the more it turns to Art Deco.
The gem of the neighborhood is surely this impressive house. It really shines thanks to its location at the top of a street. It was probably separated in two semi-detached houses from the origin, as the iron works on both sides are both sophisticate but different. Although the geometry of the house and the cut corners of the windows definitely make it Art Deco, balconies remind much more of French Renaissance Chateau style. The roof is really special, a modernized version of famous medieval tile roofs from the region, just like in the city center of Dijon or the Beaune medieval hospital. I have not found yet who the architect was but he really managed to make a mix of modernity and local traditions.
The last part of my walk around involved what I call a “Shanghai Flashback” with the corner house in Dijon (left), reminding me of a corner house in Shanghai (down). Although I later realized both houses are not that similar, the corner roof shape really makes it feel like, thousands of kilometers away from each other.
