Podensac · Gironde
Parc Chavat, a Japanese-inspired water garden of 1917
Built in 1917 for the wartime supplier François Thévenot, Parc Chavat is a landscape park with a Japanese-inspired water course, a programme of statuary and a water tower that is Le Corbusier’s first known architectural work.
From the source
Château Chavat is a château at Podensac, Gironde, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France. The recorded building campaign dates from the 20th century. Its architecture is recorded as Neoclassical architecture. It is protected as a monument historique at the higher of the two levels (classé). Details are drawn from the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture.
Editorial reading
The whole park was classified in 2006, with its sculpted decoration, its water course, its greenhouses and the so-called Le Corbusier water tower. The record describes a landscaped park laid out around a water circuit of Japanese inspiration, adorned with marble and bronze statuary made by two artists working in Rome, who produced copies of antiques and Renaissance works. In the second half of the twentieth century the estate was broken up and the water tower fell out of use; the park now belongs to the commune of Podensac.
Recommendation
It is one of the few French parks where an early-modern water tower, Roman-made copies of antique statues and a Japanese water garden share the same lawn.
Sources
Base Mérimée — immeubles protégés · PA33000088 — Licence Ouverte / Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab) — Ministère de la Culture, base Mérimée
Wikimedia Commons · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Podensac%20Ch%C3%A2teau%20Chavat%2002.jpg — CC BY-SA 3.0
The château by this garden
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