Eva Claessens’s decision to buy and restore a dilapidated 10th-century building in a tiny French village started with a dream. In the spring of 2020, the Belgian-born artist woke up with a vivid image of a home in Provence and took it as a fait accompli. “I bought all my houses because I saw them in a dream, as clearly as a photo,” she says matter-of-factly. “I always take dreams very seriously. They are so important.” Eva was in South America at the time, in the rural plains of Garzón in eastern Uruguay, which has been her main home for the last 15 years. Although the pandemic was still raging, she found a way to make it back to Europe.

There were some twists and turns along the way, but Eva’s keen senses led her to an empty building in the Var, an area in Provence known for its scenic hilltop hamlets. The structure didn’t look like much at all: a rectangular “tower,” as she calls it, three stories tall, with crumbling stone walls, no roof, and soil for parts of the ground floor. The building had once been part of a fortified wall that had encircled the local town. The painter and sculptor, known for her ethereal outlines of human bodies, liked that it had wide spaces she could turn into art studios and was undaunted by the prospect of elaborate renovations, but more than anything, she felt a visceral connection to this unusual place. “The first time I walked by the facade, I had butterflies,” she says.

Through a neighbor she befriended (one of only 850 or so residents in the area), Eva presented an offer to the property’s owners, who were initially not interested in selling. After nearly a year of negotiations—there were three owners, all French, with varying degrees of attachment to this abandoned monolith and varying financial aspirations—she was able to purchase the building, which consists of two nearly identical side-by-side sections, plus a “mezzanine” that juts out toward a neighboring structure. Then began the reconstruction of the almost 3,800 square feet of interior space, with Eva fulfilling the roles of architect and designer. “When I see something, I already see it finished. Otherwise, I don’t start,” she says. “Everywhere I look has to be beautiful and to feel soft—nothing aggressive.”

“I observed the light for weeks to find the perfect location to invite the sun inside so it can dance on the walls.”
—Eva Claessens, designer and resident

Finding a contractor to undertake this kind of project was not exactly easy; some didn’t have the experience needed to repair walls more than two feet thick, and others came with unwelcome suggestions about revamping the space. Eva made some inquiries and found a builder whose crew knew how to work with natural materials like stone and chaux, the French word for lime plaster. She used chaux to cover nearly every interior surface, save for a few walls where the original stones were left exposed. At night, when the workers were gone, Eva would come in to work on these stones by hand, using a hammer and other tools to carve them just so, making crevices where she planned to place votives and objets d’art. “It was an amazing collaboration,” she says of the renovations, which involved more improvisation than most. “This was for me like an artwork, like restoring a piece of art.”

Eva directed the crew to create cement staircases connecting the three levels and to add a series of rectangular skylights, some stacked on top of each other, to bring in as much sunlight from above as possible. (The exterior, which is landmarked and can’t be altered, doesn’t have many windows.) She decided to keep the two main sections mostly separate: One houses a kitchen with a dining area, a parlor, a painting studio, and a sculpture studio, and the other has a primary suite, a guest suite, a kitchenette, and a ceramics studio. A passage on the top floor between the two sections completes the layout. Nooks and crannies abound.

It’s an alabaster-hued hideaway that’s both cozy and mysterious, filled with singular silhouettes, some broad and sculptural, others slight and organically shaped. Eva decorated the space with eclectic antique finds and weathered wooden planks used as shelving. It all feels like something dreamed up by the offspring of an architect and an alchemist. “The way I want to live is not about luxury but about a certain aesthetic,” she says.

“It feels fresh, harmonious, and natural. I’m at home a lot, and I’m always creating.”
—Eva Claessens

Eva’s relationship with the residents of this little corner of the Var, where she now lives part-time, is a work in progress. Some hail her as a kind of hero for having restored this crumbling old tower, she says, yet more-traditionalist locals disapprove of its new appearance. She’s still learning, from inside her sanctuary, what it means to be part of this community. “It’s the first time in a long time I’ve lived in a village. I’m used to being in the countryside,” says Eva. “But I close the door and no one can look inside. It’s really like a little world of its own in here.”

Project Credits:

Designer: Eva Claessens / @evaclaessens

Builder: BA Constructions

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