Design Lyon
Where should a young archiecture student live in France (for 6 months)?
Hello everyone,
I am moving to France for 6 months next year (March to September) and am having a tricky time deciding where to go! I won’t be studying, but I will be spending lots of time drawing and practicing my french (I really want to become fluent during my time there).
I am 24, just finished the first part of my architecture degree, love cafes, art, friendly people and the countryside. I won’t have a car.
At the moment I (think) I have narrowed it down to: Lyon, Aix en Provence, St Etienne, Montpellier or Toulouse. I am interested in these cities because they have art galleries, design culture, cafe life and seem like they will be interesting places to be (where I can hopefully make lots of friends).
If anyone has lived in any of these cities and can give me some first hand information that would be great.
Thanks so much.
I have lived in three of these cities and have friends or family in the others.You have a difficult choice, but on balance I would go to either Lyon or Aix-en-Provence. I have taught at the university in Lyon which is excellent and the town has everything you could wish for and is buzzing with life and various cultural activities. If you were studying textiles then it would be the place to go even though the suburbs are less salubrious than the centre. However if you are not studying but spending your time sketching, Aix is a marvelous city, full of couleur locale, and close to several ancient towns that still have Roman monuments. You can easily hop on a train or a bus and visit them for the day. It is in an area that has attracted artists for hundreds of years. The light is marvelous there and also the contrasts. From an artistic point of view, it will give you more opportunities. The only reservation I would have, since you are practising your French, would be about the local accent and the tendency by locals to pronounce all the syllables including those that should be muted. The best French is spoken in the Loire Valley around Tours, an area which from an architetural point of view is full of treasures, but which you have not included in your choice. However if you have no car, the study of individual castles, which are dotted over a large area and often in smaller places or in the countryside, whilst very exciting and beneficial, would be more difficult to achieve.
David Lyon, Chevrolet’s Executive Director of Interior Design