Expanding Monaco

After almost a decade of planning and development Mareterra is set to be completed later this year. Monaco’s audacious land extension and mixed-use development is more than a super prime hotspot. It’s an eco-friendly community that has turned the principality’s grand ambitions into a defining landmark    

Words: Will Moffitt

In maritime circles Pierre Frolla is best known as a world champion freediver who has continually dragged himself to lower depths, stretching the limits of his endurance in search of oxygen-sapping records. Hyperactive and ruthlessly competitive, Frolla notched his third career-defining world record in 2001, plunging -80 metres in the free immersion category.

Born in Monaco in the 70s, Frolla’s father, who was a long-time member of the Monégasque spearfishing team, instilled in him a love for the sea and its inhabitants that has endured. Along with teaching students to dive, he is a passionate advocate for maritime protection, working on campaigns to safeguard precious underwater ecosystems and propagate new ones.

This calling has seen Frolla work with Prince Albert II on a spate of environmental campaigns in the Principality and replant a meadow of Poseidon grass and relocated rare giant clams on Monaco’s Mareterra development. The contribution from one of Monaco’s maritime celebrities to the audacious eco-development is another side plot in a story that has taken over a decade to come to fruition.  

It’s also an apt one, given Frolla’s drive, ambition and devotion to environmental protection. Those qualities have been long cited as key drivers behind the project’s inception and its attritional realisation.

A six-hectare reclamation project located off the coast between Monte Carlo and Larvotto, the largely pedestrianised district – designed by a coterie of world famous starchitects – will encompass a lush park, elegant waterfront promenade, and a small port.

After a decade of planning the neighbourhood of more than 130 super-prime residences is finally due for completion later this year. Set to boast the principality’s largest green public space, a marina, amenities and a promenade, Mareterra will be a playground for some very wealthy people.

“There will be 110 luxurious apartments and 10 very large villas with huge appeal to the super rich, along with all the other benefits of living in Monaco,” Olds says. “Mareterra is attracting wealth from all over the world.”

While the pull for a high-net-worth clientele is a strong one it’s simplistic to see the project solely on those terms. Mareterra has not just been conceived to cater to the super affluent, but locals and tourists.

It will fundamentally reshape the look and feel of the highrise heavy city state, providing a welcome dose of greenery for visitors and residents, expanding the two-square-kilometre territory of Monaco by three per cent.

“Building something like Maraterra takes a huge amount of time and planning and engineering but it's creating brand new land,” says James Davies, partner on the international residential team at Knight Frank.

“It's something that Monaco has done previously. There have been previous land reclamation projects, but this is on a scale that's not been done before.”

The architect of Mareterra’s ecologically sensitive Mediterranean-style aesthetic is Michel Desvigne, a internationally lauded landscape architect based in Paris. The firm’s website talks of a ‘unitary, ecologically coherent urban landscape’ whose ‘mediterranean character contrasts with the exotic gardens that punctuate the Riviera’. Pathways will lead walkers through the one hectare site unfolding on an artificial hill where 1,000 mature Aleppo and Umbrella pines and endemic Mediterranean species have been planted.

Sustainability and eco-conscious processes are baked into the fabric of the project.

The luxury offshore extension will use recycled seawater to supply the heat pumps in buildings for the production of hot water and the operation of the air conditioning systems. Rainwater harvesting systems line the roofs of the apartment buildings, funnelling this water into irrigation systems used to water green spaces. A network of photovoltaic panels will also be integrated into these buildings to harness solar power. Around 80 per cent of heating and cooling is supplied by renewable energy, and electric charging stations will be supplied for cars and bikes.

With this level of luxury, engineering prowess and eco-credentials it’s no surprise that Mareterra is feted as one of world’s leading luxury mixed-use developments. It’s one facet, albeit a significant one, in Monaco’s mission to improve its lifestyle offering. This has extended to diversifying its restaurant scene and investing in schools and academies.

For Davies, while it's difficult to ascertain what kind of impact the development is having in terms of attracting people to Monaco – people flock here for all manner of reasons – it is symbolic of the kind of family friendly, forward thinking place it is seeking to build.

“I think Monaco is somewhere that people look to in moments of instability. Monaco has an exemplary record on personal safety, the police force, the way the principality is governed, and it really looks after its residents,” Davies says.  “It's also the lifestyle side of things. It’s on the French Riviera and clearly, you can't go too wrong with that. For a very small place, it's obviously got a very glamorous history, but there is an awful lot going on.”

Eye-watering sums and an army of talent – from starchitects to designers to developers and environmental experts – have been required to deliver Monaco’s superproject. On completion it will be a landmark that fundamentally changes the complexion of the land scarce city state. Not only will the principality look different but feel different too. Symbolically Mareterra is the concretisation of lofty ambitions into tangible realities.