Riviera Dreaming: An American Architect on the Côte D'Azur

by Maureen Emerson

In 1926, a young American architect and his lover, an ex-officer in the British Army, moved to the south of France and built a white, flat-roofed Modernist masterpiece that rested on the rocks below the Esterel, with views across the Mediterranean. They called it Le Trident. From the moment it was built, it captivated Riviera society. Noel Coward called it "impossibly beautiful" and its guest book became filled with the Riviera beau monde.

As commissions for more villas flooded in, Barry Dierks and Eric Sawyer became the "darlings of the Riviera." Over the years, Dierks would design and build more than 70 of the Riviera's most recognisable villas for clients: ranging from Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque and Jack Warner's Villa Aujourd'hui to the Marquess of Cholmondeley's Manoir Eden Roc and Maxine Elliott's Chateau de l'Horizon.

Riviera Dreaming tells the dazzling story of the lives, loves, and adventures that played out behind the walls of these stunning houses and provides an unparalleled portrait of life on the Cote d'Azur at the height of the Jazz Age.

Genres: France

264 pages, Hardcover

Published June 28, 2018

Reviews

[Helen Carolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An average read about two architects who designed houses for the rich and famous on the Riviera during the two world wars. The second part of the book was more interesting than the first as it dealt with how the residents of the Riviera coped during the second world war.

[JamesK · Rating 4 out of 5]

A joint biography of Barry Dierks, the interwar architect of Riviera dream villas (including the famed Chateau d'Horizon), and his partner Eric Sawyer. A coffee table book of Dierks' work is long overdue, but in the meantime thanks are due to Maureen Emerson for this.

[Olga Vannucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Riviera: It was vital
To be rich and somewhat idle,
'Til the war broke up the idyll.