The houses-bubbles of the swiss architect Pascal Haüsermann, installed from 1967 to Raon-Step (Vosges), have been awarded 120 000 euros at an auction Friday in Épinal. The sale will be final at the end of the statutory period of ten days, allowing a possible higher bid of a higher amount of at least 10%. The purchaser of these houses-bubbles, Christophe Péchet, is over the age of fifty years, works in Paris and is a native of the Vosges, according to his lawyer Alain Bégel.

“His maternal grandmother was in vosges, and it has stayed for years during her holidays,” Raon-Step, where she lived, said the lawyer, called “very attached to the place” and the bearer of a “real project” for these homes-bubbles. The starting price was 100,000 euros, but only three bidders emerged, the sale being concluded in a few minutes.

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The eleven houses in the form of bubbles, located on a plot of 4.100 m2, separated from the rest of the municipality by a water course, the Plain, had been acquired in 2006 to 180,000 euros by five friends, passionate about the utopian architect and the 1950s to the 1970s. They had transformed the site into a hotel structure, which was his first vocation. Due to a decline in attendance and the weight of the bank loans, incurred to finance the acquisition and renovation, the architectural ensemble, called island Haüsermann, had been placed into receivership in 2015, and then closed.

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The eleven bubbles white, composed of a metal structure and sailing of shotcrete, had been classified as historical monuments in 2015. “It is a very difficult time, a part of our life has gone, any involvement of a decade, flies away in a few minutes of the auction,” said, very moved, Joel Morel, one of the owners. With 120.000 euros, “it is far from the account in relation to the investment that we put in this place. It does not yet have the account to repay all that one must”, he added. But “it is hoped that there will be a better outcome at the end of ten days”, he slipped.