Architect Amelia Tavella wins the design competition for the demolition, rehabilitation, and extension of the unique thermal Spa in the Mediterranean. Aware of the challenges and eager to realize its ambitions, the City of Balaruc-les-Bains initiated reflection on the rejuvenation of the O'Balia thermal spa, incorporated within the broader redevelopment project of the Hespérides site.
The architect chose to direct attention towards the Thau lagoon and orchestrate a meeting between geology and genealogy. Numerous traces bear witness to Balaruc's Roman origins: archaeological remains, ancient buried baths, mosaics, and busts of statues. This founding past is now invisible.
Writer Nina Bouraoui recounts the transformation of the O'Balia thermal Spa:
" Water is our first kingdom. It is on the first day, at the first ges- ture, at the first heartbeat, at the first breath. We knew how to swim before we knew how to walk (...) Nature is a second mother, pouring forth soothing, beneficent water, purifying, gentle, salty, and bubbling, a friend to blood, bones, and skin. If the history of our evolution is a history of forgetting, the history of architecture is one of memory. This architecture does not construct, it resurrects; it does not destroy, it exhumes; it does not erase, it reveals. This architecture excavates, seeks, frees, it is archaeology, witchcraft, and mediumship. It looks to antiquity, guardian of miraculous water, that of Athena for Heracles, that of the citizen and the legions of soldiers riveted to Maimona, now Balaruc, temple of baths, of the body, of the first gesture, of the first heartbeat.
Mirror architecture, its new stones draw inspiration from the first. It shows, exhibits what is no longer seen. It builds from ruins, in the hollow of the Thau lagoon and the Gardiole massif. It opens to the future while retaining the furrows of the past. It follows the plans of another time, elevating columns, pillars, ghostly floors.
This architecture is free and sealed to its place; it invents by continuing, it speaks what had become silent, straightening out horizontal and erased lines, saluting the gods and goddesses of yesteryear. Healing water becomes a sign, material, queen of the realm, falling from the sky and tracing a path."
The architect follows the traces of a recent and ancient past. She reinvents without destroying, delicately composing with the existing structure:
"I have the desire to embark on a quest for the memory of Maimona, revealing from the ground, like an archaeologist, the traces of its past. The new thermal spa will be a meeting between geology and genealogy. Our architecture aims to reinvent without destroying, delicately composing with the existing structure: to be reborn without disowning. My architecture follows the traces of a recent and ancient past. The existing building thus serves as our guide. The slender architecture of the wooden wing is preserved, honoring the more recent past. A mineral graft, following the traces of an older time, descends the topography towards the shore.
Its new stones draw inspiration from the first, those of Maimona. Healing water becomes a sign, material, queen of the realm, falling from the sky and tracing a path." Amelia Tavella's distinctive approach is exemplified by the O'Balia Thermal Spa project:
"The Mediterranean is my matrix. I come from there, from this unique place. Child of the scrubland and sands, I learned the complexity of my profession as an architect here. Sea, rock, beach, my femininity has embraced the femininity of this sea, delicately exercising, repairing the damaged lace, drawing inspiration from sediments, soft, primal matter. My island taught me about light, color, slope, constantly reminding me that there is no valid creation without ethics and that history is the cradle of the present. Thus, my artistic approach is built, connected to my roots, to the origin."
