Chavat water tower

The commission came in 1917 from François Thévenot, an engineer in public works in Bordeaux, who asked the young Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret for a water tower to serve the park of his Chavat estate in Podensac. The estate includes a château designed by Henri Marmisse in 1916. The drinking-water network was set up by SABA (Société d'Application du Béton Armé), where Jeanneret was then consulting architect; the company had been founded by Max Du Bois, a friend from his childhood.

The reinforced-concrete tower is the first known architectural work by Le Corbusier in France.

Thirteen years after it was built, the Podensac water board bought the tower. In the 1940s it took the tank out of use and had a new, larger water tower built close by. Jeanneret's tower was left abandoned. In 1987 the association of Bordeaux architects Groupe des Cinq obtained it for a symbolic franc, under a 99-year long lease, and has since looked after its protection and promotion. Its listing as a historic monument came in 2006, together with the estate's park.

Jeanneret designed for SABA a reinforced-concrete water tower that looks like a lighthouse. A door topped by an oculus opens onto a spiral staircase, which climbs to a rest room under the tank. This room, called the gloriette, is pierced by eight arched windows, which give views over the whole surrounding landscape.

A terrace was built at the top, above the tank, but its access staircase was never finished: a simple ladder takes its place. The terrace was meant to carry a lantern, which was not installed.

The tower can be seen from outside; it is not open to visits for the time being.