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"View Slideshow\n\nClaes and I were actually both born in Europe,\" Coosje van Bruggen explains as she leads the way through the cool, white interiors of the ch\u00E2teau she shares with her husband, Claes Oldenburg. \"And although America has long been the center of our lives, we've always wanted to spend a few months of the year in a place with a deeper sense of the past where we felt we could bring our European side and our American identity together. I'd always been attracted to France because I studied French literature, and I was particularly drawn to this region because so many writers I admire, from Rabelais to Balzac and Proust, spent time here. As soon as we saw Ch\u00E2teau de la Borde, we knew there was something special about it. But when we discovered that a previous owner had been a great friend of Alexis de Tocqueville's, and that Tocqueville had used the little summer pavilion in the garden to work on his Democracy in America, we were convinced that this would be the place for us.\"\n\nWhile communing happily with the past, van Bruggen and Oldenburg knew that Ch\u00E2teau de la Borde would not fully belong to them until they had reshaped it to accommodate their very different and highly individual outlook on life. Having first explored and absorbed local traditions, they then applied a radical vision to the estate. And one of their first decisions was to remove the garden's classically inspired statue and add works of their own: Thus a sculpture of Diana, goddess of the hunt, made way for a flying blueberry pie sculpture; then a giant safety pin, safe no more with its sharp prong unleashed, rose into the mild sky. This sudden transition might have remained essentially provocative if the two artists had not replanned the extensive gardens completely by creating a new pond and bringing in a huge variety of trees and plants from all over the world, which they sited with the same flair that they bring to their sculpture installations.\n\nThe skill with which the parkland has been turned into a landscape of winding paths and subtly contrasting groups of trees is fully matched by the radical but seamless way van Bruggen and Oldenburg have renovated their house. From the ch\u00E2teau's impeccably restored classical exterior one passes almost unawares into sleekly contemporary reception rooms. There is a minimum of furniture, with modernist pieces by Le Corbusier, Charles and Ray Eames, and Alvar Aalto taking pride of place, although the upstairs rooms contain Frank Gehry chairs and an Eileen Gray dresser and mirror. Apart from the occasional vibrant work of art, the colors throughout are predominantly black and white.\n\nThe overall atmosphere is nevertheless more serene than severe, and there is an almost exultant feel to the clean-cut spaces, not least when one imagines how they might be (and perhaps once were) crammed with indifferent period furniture, unloved heirlooms and objets d'art. \"These buildings have a nearly timeless fabric,\" says Oldenburg. \"Parts of them date as far back as the 16th century, others to the 17th and 18th. But Coosje had the vision that enabled us to combine a traditional exterior with completely simple, modern interiors where we felt at home. And the works that we've created here together\u2014like the musical instrument sculptures in what we call the salon, or the relief based on Seurat's Bathers hanging over the dining room table\u2014reflect that subtle and incisive vision of hers.\"\n\nWhen they are not entertaining friends in their sparely furnished but comfortable and highly convivial dining room, Oldenburg and van Bruggen spend their time planning improvements to their property or mulling over new sculpture projects. \"The house is centered around our work in the sense that we get a lot of fresh ideas just by spending a few weeks out here,\" van Bruggen says. \"Time seems to slow down, and the pressure of the projects we've got under way on both coasts in America gradually diminishes. We start bouncing ideas off each other in the studio or the library\u2014or often by wandering around the park, looking at nature, picking up odd-shaped stones and making connections between things we've seen and things we've read. Planning this garden, for example, and noticing the contrasts in scale and the connections between trees and sculpture has been immensely rewarding. I think what Claes and I have looked for above all in our home here is a simplicity of form\u2014but a simple form with layers of meaning, which open up one by one like a sculpture the more deeply you look into it.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/oldenburg-article-042005>