Some airlines have begun issuing waivers in anticipation of what is expected to be a major snowstorm in the Northeast United States this weekend.
Why Flaine is the perfect purpose-built French mountain town
20.12.2023 - 09:18 / nationalgeographic.com
Flaine is a French purpose-built resort whose creator didn’t feel the need to reflect the grandeur of the mountains in jagged shapes or classic chalets. It was born in the Swinging Sixties, designed by Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer who called the US home. He was a master of the geometric Bauhaus style and had created UNESCO’s grand Paris HQ. An entire ski town was a new challenge, which he met by producing a resort like no other.
There have been many detractors who did not recognise the elegance — the shifting sun dancing off the softly bevelled windows, the shining symmetry — and for a while, Flaine looked like becoming a sink estate. But thankfully, we’ve fallen back in love with its functionalism, and now Flaine has become something of a living museum to architecture, a delight to walk through and ski around, with a historic district lined with listed buildings.
It was ahead of its time, with gondolas and cable-cars running from ground level (no hefting skis up steps), and Europe’s first snowmaking system.
And Flaine has continued to evolve. My accommodation at Les Terrasses d’Eos, in the Montsoleil area above the resort, sits alongside Les Terrasses d’Hélios — both apartment complexes are grandly cosy, with restaurants, bars, spa, ski shop and supermarket. Opening in 2015 and 2014 respectively, they were the Montsoleil area’s debut development, and have since been awarded the global Green Key environmental award for recycling and energy efficiency. Flaine’s access road passes here but skirts the centre leaving it car-free, the resort’s different apartment zones discreetly hidden by the valley drop. Two little glass box funicular lifts whizz skiers between levels, and while a Picasso sculpture, La Tête de Femme, a colourful Cubist face on a pole, stands loud and proud, Flaine’s cables and wires are tucked away from sight in tunnels, part of Breuer’s architectural vision to integrate the resort into the landscape’s natural contours.
But what about the skiing? From one area below my apartment block, and the striking cantilevered concrete deck of Hôtel Le Totem sitting elegantly on a ridge, ski lifts head off in most directions — and all the resort’s runs pour back to this point. Flaine is part of the 165-mile Grand Massif, France’s fourth-biggest connected area, taking in the villages of Les Carroz, Sixt, Morillon and Samoëns. There’s everything from the nine-mile forest-fringed run above Sixt to gorgeous above-treeline pistes with Mont Blanc views. But Flaine is a decent ski area in itself — including some tremendous off-piste terrain through the trees. The base area has beginner lifts, with all runs — a mass of intermediate and easy pistes — ending in the one spot. The La Joyeuse Flainoise is a
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