Opening in 1966, the French ski resort of Avoriaz was only accessible by cable car and looked like something from an expressionist movie. It still does, and there are still no cars to be seen...

Words and images: Alastair Philip Wiper

Redolent of the sets from the German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the Sixties' ski resort of Avoriaz in the French Alps was pioneering in many ways, not least in that cars were never part of the plan. When seen from afar, the buildings appear to blend in with the mountains. The resort was planned so that every door opens to a piste to the bottom of town, while a series of public lifts carry people back up to the top of the town. You can ski to the shops to pick up your groceries, then take a lift back to your apartment. If you want to go from one part of town to the other, a horse-drawn sleigh will take you there.

© Alastair Philip Wiper

A little more than an hour's drive from Geneva and 1,800m above sea level, it is part of the Portes du Soleil ski area. Avoriaz started life as a desolate plateau, on a cliff high above the town of Morzine. In the summer it was used by a few goat herders, and in the winter it was not used at all, until a few brave skiers started to venture up there -- the old-fashioned way, walking all the way up and then skiing down very quickly. One of those energetic people was Jean Vuarnet, a child of Morzine, and winner of the 1960 Olympics' men's downhill. After returning from the Games, he was asked by the municipality of Morzine to develop a new area for skiing around the town, and Vuarnet proposed the plateau as the site for a purpose-built resort of Avoriaz.Vuarnet unearthed an investor in the shape of Gerard Bremond, the son of a rich industrialist and part of the French jet set. Bremond wanted a 'Saint Tropez de Neige' -- a Swinging Sixties resort, with high-profile guests frolicking in the snow drinking champagne. But he was also a visionary -- he had a strong passion for jazz and film -- and he wanted to create a totally unique resort, which embraced the modern world but was also in harmony with nature.

© Alastair Philip Wiper

'When one goes on holiday. one hopes to find a different context to the one in which one lives daily,' extolled Bremond. 'In Avoriaz there will be no cars. The roads will serve as ski runs, the architecture will integrate itself into the landscape, but will be new and ground-breaking. It is not necessary to explain how these proposals will cause an outcry!'

© Alastair Philip Wiper

To fulfil his vision, Bremond hired the young, recently graduated architect Jacques Labro, who assembled a team and set about designing Avoriaz. In 1966, the resort opened to guests, with one hotel, the Hotel des Dromonts, sitting on top of the cliff. It must have been quite surreal. The French writer, Regine Deforges, was hired to install a library at the hotel: 'At the time one could only access its 1800m by a swaying and squeaking cable car, which lifted one above the level of the trees. We got out relieved but with trembly legs. But what a reward! An immense white area limited only by the sky, the steep slopes cheered up by the presence of fir trees and the cliff face, a cliff like the one which plunges into the North Sea or the Channel. I anticipated the sound of the sea, but all around me was silence -- a unique, pure silence, which made one respectful of such virgin beauty. A horse-drawn carriage transported me away and the night swallowed up the mountains. "We are here," cried a voice. Looking up I saw a dark mass spotted here and there with lights, a chateau from a dark novel: it was the Hotel des Dromonts on the eve of Christmas 1966.'

© Alastair Philip Wiper

Bremond also found a great way to draw publicity to Avoriaz, by launching the Festival international du film fantastique d'Avoriaz, a horror and fantasy film festival, which ran from 1973 to 1993. The fantastical nature of the buildings and their surroundings was the perfect backdrop to the festival, which quickly became well respected, attracting directors such as David Lynch and Roman Polanski.

© Alastair Philip Wiper

I first visited Avoriaz in 2004, as a 23-year-old ski bum, and was immediately struck by the architecture, a subject I knew nothing about. It was the spookiness of the buildings that really grabbed my attention. I thought they had a dark side, in a good way -- and I immediately began to imagine what the architect was thinking and what he was influenced by when he was designing this place. Later on, I saw Robert Weine's Cabinet of Dr Caligari and wondered if it had been an influence: 'I had seen it, but no, it wasn't an influence!' says Jacques Labro. 'The mountains were more of an inspiration. And other architects of the time -- Alvar Alto, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi, the expressionist architects that were the base of my studies.

© Alastair Philip Wiper

'The buildings were not intended to have this fantastical element, but when Bremond came up with the idea for the festival I thought it fitted perfectly. I could see why others thought that. Bremond is very cultured, he is very passionate about film and music. But I think that the buildings only add to the fantastic nature of the area; it has always been like that -- the cliffs, the plateau, the fact that when we opened Avoriaz there was no road, you had to take the cable car.

'Actually the whole idea of no cars was very, very important to the concept. I think it is still completely unique in the world for a skiing resort. It was Jean Vuarnet who pushed the idea that you had to be able to ski in and out of every building, and this was very controversial at that time because the car was king, it was almost a symbol of France. But the idea of parking your car at the bottom of the cliff, and then leaving the ground and flying through the air in a cable car, and arriving in a new, magical place where everything looks different, like another world, was very important when we were designing Avoriaz.

© Alastair Philip Wiper

'You should be leaving your normal world behind and experiencing something else for a week. We even brought reindeer from Lapland to pull the sleds, to add to the magical feeling -- but it ended up being a bit of a disaster because you cannot control a reindeer the way you can a horse -- they get scared very easily -- so soon there was baggage strewn all over the resort by out-of-control reindeer!'

Another person deeply affected by Avoriaz, was fellow ski bum Simon Cloutier, who first saw it in the Eighties. He also fell in love with the architecture -- so much so that he decided to become an architect so he could continue the work on those buildings. At architecture school in Grenoble, Cloutier made his final project about a new sector of the town, and part of that project has now been realised in the new Amara area that opened last year. Labro and Cloutier now work together on Avoriaz through the Atelier d'Architecture d'Avoriaz, with Cloutier based in Avoriaz and Jacques based in Paris.

