Maison de Marèes

Cap Ferret, France

BRAND IDENTITY + ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPMENT / CURATING EXPERIENCE / CREATIVE DIRECTION

Between the Atlantic and the Bassin, a different idea of hospitality.

A hotel could be built anywhere. Maison de Marèes could only belong here.

Cap Ferret exists between two waters: the Atlantic on one side, the Bassin d’Arcachon on the other. Life follows the geography — mornings by the ocean, afternoons around the Bassin, oyster tables filling and emptying, bicycles crossing pine-lined roads, boats returning with the tide.

The opportunity was to create a hotel that feels inseparable from that rhythm.

Maison de Marées began with the idea that a hotel here should feel as though it had grown from the peninsula itself.

We looked at what makes Cap Ferret recognisable beyond its scenery: the way people move through it, the materials that age in its salt air, the relationship between land and water, the informality of its houses and the character that has accumulated over generations.

From there, we began building a hotel whose identity, spaces and guest experience could belong specifically to this place.

THE CENTRAL IDEA

Between two waters.

Cap Ferret is a narrow line of land with the Atlantic to the west and the Bassin d’Arcachon to the east. One side is open, windswept and expansive. The other is warmer, inhabited and closely tied to boats, oyster villages and the table.

Maison de Marées was developed around this duality.

05 / IDENTITY

From the peninsula,
a visual language.

The identity began with the same relationship that shaped the hotel: land between two bodies of water. Lines, forms and proportions were developed from the peninsula, the movement of the tide and the maritime character of the Bassin — translated into a system that could belong naturally to Maison de Marées.

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The constant and the changing.

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The mark is built around a tension between permanence and change. The circle gives it a sense of continuity, while the tidal lines move through its edge, disrupting what would otherwise be a complete and stable form. They appear to continue beyond what can be seen, leaving part of the image to the imagination.

That tension became important to the wider idea of Maison de Marées. Familiarity gives us a sense of attachment to a place, while subtle change keeps us attentive to it. The aim was to create an identity that could become recognisable over time without ever feeling entirely static — something remembered not only for its form, but for the feeling of encountering it again.