Nº 019Cap Verroux · 43.19° N
Fourteenrooms.
A customs house of 1908 on the cliff at Cap Verroux, forty metres above the water, with nothing else on this stretch of coast.
Nº 019One rock · one day
Scroll isthe sun.
Every figure on this page is computed from where the sun stands over the cape — its height, its colour, the light it lands with, the length of a shadow.
- Rooms
- 14
- Above the sea
- 40m
- Pool
- 38m
- Season
- May – Oct
IArrival ·
The road endsbefore the house.
The last stretch is a path cut into the rock. At this hour the sun is still low behind the headland and every step throws a shadow three times its own height.
IIInside ·
Thick walls,one long view.
The arcade faces 208°, its openings are 3.2 m high and the colonnade is 4.1 m deep. Before two in the afternoon the sun cannot get past the piers at all, which is why the corridors stay cool in August with nothing switched on.
IIIThe room ·
Fourteen rooms,no two the same.
Nothing hangs on the walls: the window is the picture, and it is repainted every hour as the beam works down the black-body curve towards the sea.
IVThe water ·
Thirty-eight metreson the edge.
The pool runs along 118°, held at 28° and level with the horizon. Late in the day the sun swings round behind it and lays a glitter path straight down the length of the water.
VEvening ·
The lamps come onbefore the sun goes.
A photocell on the roof holds the lamps off until the sun drops past the cliff opposite at 2.1°, then brings them up over six degrees of altitude — so they are already warm while there is still colour on the water.